LabourStart headline - Source: SACOM

More... (http://sacom.hk/archives/960)

And now this....


Foxconn Plant Closed After Riot, Company Says

SHANGHAI — Foxconn Technology, a major supplier to some of the world’s electronics giants, including Apple, said it had closed one of its large Chinese plants early Monday after the police were called in to break up a fight among factory employees.

A spokesman for the company said some people had been hurt and detained by the police after the disturbance escalated into a riot late Sunday. The company said the cause of the disturbance was still under investigation.

One Foxconn employee reached by telephone Monday afternoon, however, said the disturbance had begun when workers started brawling with security guards, and it eventually had led to a huge riot involving more than 1,000 workers. Foxconn said no property had been destroyed or damaged.

Unconfirmed photographs and video circulated on social networking sites, purporting to be from the factory, showed smashed windows, riot police officers and large groups of workers milling around. The Foxconn plant, in the central Chinese city of Taiyuan, employs about 79,000 workers.

The Chinese state-run news media said 5,000 police officers had been called in to quell the riot.

A Foxconn spokesman declined to specify whether the Taiyuan plant made products for the Apple iPhone 5, which went on sale last week, but he said it supplied goods to many consumer electronics brands.

An employee at the Taiyuan plant, however, said iPhone components were made there. Most Apple-related production, though, takes place in other parts of China, particularly in the provinces of Sichuan and Henan. Apple could not be reached for comment.

Foxconn said it employs about 1.1 million workers in China.

The disturbance is the latest problem to hit Foxconn, a key supplier of products to Apple and other global electronics companies, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Foxconn, which is part of Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, has been struggling to improve labor conditions at its China factories after reports about labor abuse and work safety violations.

Apple and Foxconn have worked together in the last year to improve conditions, raise pay and improve labor standards.

Disturbances at factories have become increasingly common in China, rights groups say, as laborers have begun to demand higher pay and better conditions.

Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Hong Kong seeking collective bargaining and other protections for workers in mainland China, said workers in China had become increasingly emboldened.

“They’re more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice,” he said, adding that damage to factory buildings and equipment still appeared to be unusual, occurring in fewer than 1 in 20 protests.

The same Taiyuan factory was the site of a brief strike during a pay dispute last March, the Hong Kong news media reported then.

Social media postings suggested that some injuries might have occurred when people were trampled in crowds of protesters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/technology/foxconn-plant-in-china-closed-after-worker-riot.html?_r=0

This report calls it a riot, others call it a brawl among workers, though I've not seen any reasons attributed. As to OP indicates there are plenty of reasons for those workers to be plenty unhappy. Interesting comment on NPR, the speaker related that in his experience just a few years ago these Chinese workers would tolerate damn near any abuse, including beatings. Not so much now, they are more experienced now, have had the smallest taste of potential improvement in their lives and want more of it. Experience has shown that it is these relative 'good times' that are the season for organizing. If the industrial workers of China begin to organize that will be a major game changer though of course it will take years, maybe decades.

Foxconn’s Factory, Producing iPhone 5’s, Erupts in a Riot

China Labor Watch

September 24, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

(New York) Today, China Labor Watch (CLW) released its statement on the riot in Foxconn’s Taiyuan factory.

Chinese media has reported that on the night of September 23, Foxconn’s Taiyuan factory erupted in a riot involving over 2000 workers that has led to the injury of 40 people. The initial trigger of the incident involves a conflict between some guards and a worker. The guards reportedly dragged the worker into a van and began beating him. This led to the involvement of other workers, quickly devolving into a large-scale group fight between workers and guards. By the end of the night, the guards had ran away.

But the roots causes of this incident demand attention. Foxconn factories, which produce many of Apple’s products, have a history of maintaining militaristic management practices as well as putting an inordinate amount of stress on workers. Coming from a variety of places throughout China, workers are required to work 10-hour day and night shifts with little rest, receiving low wages, and all the while suffering very strict factory rules on behavior and suffering the verbal and physical abuse of guards. Given such stress, the workers are on edge, and incidents like the one yesterday are more likely to occur. This is especially true of a time in which Apple has given Foxconn large orders for new products, like the iPhone 5.

CLW doesn’t know the exact products manufactured by workers involved in this incident, but this Taiyuan factory is currently producing Apple’s iPhone 5’s. We can thus conclude that the pressure on workers at this factory must be greater than usual.

These workers must be treated with respect. And both Apple and Foxconn, with billions of dollars in profits every year, have both a legal and ethical obligation to uphold the rights of these workers.

When Apple puts in orders with Foxconn for the new iPhone, it never considers the human rights of the workers, nor the production capacity of its factories. Rather, it is only concerned with sales revenues, PR, customers----its own interests. Just as in the case of the riot taking place in Foxconn's Taiyuan factory, a large number of workers are transferred to the factory at one time to produce the new iPhone. This large influx combined with the militaristic management at the factory results in tremendous pressure on the workers, and this may have been a root cause of the conflict. This sort of circumstance is bound to lead to the eruption of certain issues in other factories of Foxconn sooner or later.


About China Labor Watch:

Founded in 2000, China Labor Watch is an independent not-for-profit organization. In the past ten years, CLW has collaborated with labor organizations and the media to conduct a series of in-depth assessments of factories in China that produce toys, bikes, shoes, furniture, clothing, and electronics for some of the largest companies. CLW’s New York office creates reports from these investigations, educates the international community on supply chain labor issues, and pressures corporations to improve conditions for workers.

Li Qiang
E-Mail: qiang@chinalaborwatch.org
Phone: +001 212-244-4049
Cell Phone: +001 917-257-8589
147 W 35th Street , STE 406
New York, NY 10001

http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-425.html

Foxconn Workers Labor Under Police Watch After Riot Shuts Plant

Security teams wearing riot helmets and wielding plastic shields marched around a Foxconn Technology Group factory in a show of force after a fight involving 2,000 workers prompted the company to suspend production there.

The campus used by 79,000 workers in Taiyuan, in northern Shanxi province, showed the damage caused by a Sept. 23 clash between laborers from different provinces that left more than 40 people hospitalized. Windows in a bath house, supermarket, arcade and parked cars were shattered as investigators tried to determine how a fight in a dormitory escalated into a riot quelled by hundreds of security guards and police.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou has moved in recent years to improve conditions at his factories after a spate of suicides and pressure from the company’s largest customer, Apple Inc. (AAPL) Some changes haven’t reached smaller locations such as Taiyuan, workers said. The facility has inferior food, poor sanitation and overcrowded dorms, while security guards are young, poorly trained and too aggressive, workers outside the gates said.

“The guards here use gangster style to manage,” Fang Zhongyang, 23, said outside campus gates. “We are not against following rules but you have to tell us why. They won’t explain things and we feel like we cannot communicate with them.”

Fang, from nearby Henan province, has worked at Foxconn for two years. He started in Shenzhen, the company’s biggest facility, making Apple iPhones and moved to Taiyuan four months ago after being told that Foxconn wasn’t going to make those products there anymore.

‘Fierce’ Guards

One guard, a young woman, yelled at a reporter for interviewing workers near the southern gate and told employees to get back inside. She ordered the reporter to go across the street, saying the space outside the gate was Foxconn property.

“The guards here are fierce,” said a worker identifying himself as Huang, 20.

As he spoke, platoons in green uniforms kept formation inside the campus.

Louis Woo, a spokesman for the Taipei-based company, said he was unaware of the accusations against the security guards.

“If there’s any truth to these allegations, we’ll take severe action against any security guards, even though we don’t hire them directly,” Woo said by phone.

Foxconn isn’t hiring more security, yet it has asked government officials to help monitor the situation. Woo declined to say what products were made at the Taiyuan factory. The employees interviewed said they made small components.

Poorly Trained

Gou agreed with a management decision to shut production for a day after the Sept. 23 fight, the company said. Foxconn said it expected limited impact on production.

Workers said the fight started in a dormitory and escalated when guards employed by independent contractors responded with excessive force. Such tension is typical in China, said Geoffrey Crothall, a director at rights group China Labor Bulletin.

“Factory workers anywhere, beyond Foxconn, never have a good word to say about security guards,” Crothall said. “Their training is minimal, they’re recruited en masse and the requirements are not much.”

more.....

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-26/foxconn-workers-labor-under-police-watch-after-riot-shuts-plant

'Poorly trained cops', uh-uh, where have we heard that before? This ain't got nothin' to do with Apple & co, nope, their products with their fabulous mark-ups are only made their coincidentally. Guards? Sounds more like overseers or legionaries to me. Don't think this is what a NEP is supposed to look like.

Although this paper does lean a bit too much on the sensational(suicides) it's a pretty good window for what goes on in Chinese capitalism. A reader of Capital will find much familiar. If what we see in China is some sort of mega-NEP it has gone badly awry.

http://rdln.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pun-ngai_chan-jenny_on-foxconn.pdf

If what we see in China is some sort of mega-NEP it has gone badly awry


What we're seeing in China (although Foxconn is only one part of the story) is the attempt to divorce economics from the political. You and I know that ain't happening and never will but theory often meets reality with much grinding of gears and gnashing of teeth.

There is something odd that so many "theorists" who depart from Marx draw affirmation from China when in fact the case of China completely validates Marx and dispels all of their breakaway bullshit.

What we're seeing in China (although Foxconn is only one part of the story) is the attempt to divorce economics from the political. You and I know that ain't happening and never will but theory often meets reality with much grinding of gears and gnashing of teeth.

There is something odd that so many "theorists" who depart from Marx draw affirmation from China when in fact the case of China completely validates Marx and dispels all of their breakaway bullshit.

I agree with this in whole. There is some kind of very odd shit happening in China (over the last thirty years or so), that defies analysis. Part of this is because China is hard to "see" clearly, but also it is because what the governing Communist Party says is so completely at odds with what it is doing. If there is any "mega-NEP" thing going on, they are hiding it very well...