Foxconn says dispute has ended after Chinese factory employees said they would jump off building in protest
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| An assembly line at a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China. Photograph: Qilai Shen/Corbis |
Workers at a factory owned by Foxconn, Apple's
main manufacturer, threatened to jump off the roof of a building in a
protest about wages, a month after the two firms reached agreement on
improving working conditions.
The protest happened in the central China city of Wuhan.
It involved 200 workers, the Hong-Kong based activist group Information Centre for Human Rights said.
A
company spokesman said the dispute, which concerned workplace
adjustments and involved new workers, had been settled. He said it was
not a strike. The company employs 1.2 million workers in China.
"The
dispute has already been settled after some negotiations involving the
human resources and legal departments as well as the local government,"
the Taipei-based spokesman, Simon Tsing, said.
Foxconn, China's
largest private-sector employer, and Apple agreed to tackle violations
of working conditions and improve working environments.
The deal
was agreed almost two years after a series of worker suicides at Foxconn
plants focused attention on conditions at Chinese factories and sparked
criticism that Apple's products were made by Chinese workers subjected
to mistreatment.
On Tuesday Apple reported that its fiscal
second-quarter net income almost doubled after a jump in iPhone sales,
exceeding financial market expectations.
Tsing declined to say how many employees were involved in the latest dispute. He said no one had jumped off any building.
The
Information Centre for Human Rights said one of the complaints of the
workers was that they earned less in Wuhan than they had in their
previous jobs. They returned to work after police intervened, it said.
Global
protests against Apple rose after reports spread in 2010 of a string of
suicides at Foxconn plants in southern China. Apple agreed to an
investigation by the independent Fair Labour Association to stem
criticism that its products were built in sweatshop-like conditions.
The 159 million migrant workforce saw an average salary increase in 2011 of 21.2%, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Article Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/27/apple-contractor-workers-threaten-suicide
