Foxconn Workers on Strike After iPhone 5 Starts Brawls

Source: Gizmodo

Sam Biddle

The underpaid, overworked Chinese workers of Foxconn have had enough, according to a new report by China Labor Watch: thousands have gone on strike over immense iPhone manufacturing pressure and fistfights with their bosses.

The report comes after both a claimed uptick in working conditions by Foxconn, and a shortage of new iPhones—the most intricate of all time—on Apple's part. The latter, the labor watchdog claims, pushed Apple to demand greater output (and longer hours) by its outsourced labor army—and a steep drop in quality. Simply, people were being asked to build extremely sophisticated things without proper training. Exasperated by stretched hours and seemingly unfair expectations, the workers started beating up quality control staff, caught between enraged labor and indifferent management:

Quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures. The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors.

According to workers, there was a fight between workers and quality control inspectors in area K that led to the damage in inspection room CA, the injury of some people, and the hospitalization of others. After this, another similar incident occurred in area K, once again leading to quality control inspectors getting beat up.

Read more: http://gizmodo.com/5949406/foxconn-workers-on-strike-after-iphone-5-leads-to-physical-beatings

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Also at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-thousands-foxconn-workers-iphone-201932700.html

I wouldn't want the fanbois to go home for a three-day weekend without seeing this.

Disclaimer: I own a whole bunch of Macs. I also own shares of HPQ, which, despite a horrible assessment today, was down less, percentagewise, than shares of AAPL.

The original story is at China Labor Watch:

http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/