Monday, September 24, 2012

2000 Foxconn Workers Riot at iPhone 5 Plant (AAPL)

“Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.”
- Foxconn CEO Terry Gou at an annual family day for staff at the Taipei Zoo.

Foxconn began as a tradename of Hon Hai and then became a subsidiary employing more than 1,200,000 people.

From the Daily Mail:
2,000 in staff riot at iPhone's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory after 'guard beats up worker'  
  • Riot at factory in northern China started at 11pm and lasted four hours 
  • A total of 50 police officers were called in to bring riot under control 
  • In March factory workers went on strike over pay and working conditions
A riot involving 2,000 workers broke out at an Apple factory in China, leaving 40 people injured.

More than 5,000 police were reportedly sent to bring the riot at the Foxconn factory in the northern city of Taiyuan in the Shanxi province of China until control after trouble erupted in workers' sleeping quarters yesterday.

Comments on Chinese internet bulletin boards said the trouble may have been sparked by a security guard hitting an employee and not related to the recent anti-Japan protests.
In a statement, the Taiwanese-owned company said: 'A personal dispute between several employees escalated into an incident involving some 2,000 workers at approximately 11pm last night in a privately-managed dormitory.'...MUCH MORE
Foxconn apologized for Mr. Gou's "animal" comment saying he was merely asking the zoo director if he had any tips for managing animals. 

Last Year Mr. Gou announced plans to build a "Robot Kingdom" in Taiwan to manufacture up to 1,000,000 robot employees for the China plants. The company had installed 10,000 "Foxbots" by January of this year with the full deployment scheduled to be completed by year-end 2014.

Foxconn also announced plans to build up to $10 Billion worth of plants in low-wage Indonesia with the first plant to begin manufacturing by December.