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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Workers at Apple contractor threaten suicide in wage dispute

Foxconn says dispute has ended after Chinese factory employees said they would jump off building in protest


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
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