Good News: FOXCONN Slave Factories Are Coming to America

If this is China’s way in trying to placate President Trump, with slave factory jobs, taking the place of American manufacturers who hold themselves to higher standards, they’re in for a rude awaking.

NIKKEI is reporting that FOXCONN, home of the factory suicide net, is interested in investing $7b in a plant that will make Apple products, which will create 30-50k jobs.

Source: Bloomberg

Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou told reporters in Taipei the company is considering a joint investment with Apple Inc. for a display manufacturing facility in the U.S., according to a report by the Nikkei Asian Review.

The facility would cost more than $7 billion and may create an eventual 30,000 to 50,000 jobs, the publication cited Gou as saying. The rising demand for larger displays makes domestic U.S. production a better solution than shipping from China and “Apple is willing to invest in the facility together because they need the (panels) as well,” he said. Apple didn’t immediately respond Sunday to a Bloomberg News request for comment.

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is also planning a new molding facility in the U.S., possibly in Pennsylvania, Nikkei reported. Separately, Smart Technologies, a Foxconn-controlled interactive display company in Canada, may move to the U.S. in light of President Donald Trump’s indication he may seek to alter terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Nikkei reported Gou as saying.

Gou said he sees American protectionism as “inevitable” while questioning whether U.S. consumers will be willing to pay much higher prices for equipment of equal quality, according to Nikkei. The publication said Gou spoke to reporters after Foxconn’s holiday party in the Nankang district of Taipei.

We need these jobs like we need a hole in the head. Nice try Tim Cook.

Try again.

As for FOXCONN’s management of their employees: it is reprehensible and it hearkens back to the Victorian era, before we gave a shit about human life.

Via WSJ

In years past, these workers said, Foxconn would make liberal use of overtime to ensure that assembly lines were fully staffed. But they say Foxconn has now shifted tactics in some units, and is allowing only workers who can recruit another worker to be eligible for overtime. They say this creates hardships for those who can’t find recruits, as without overtime wages are barely enough to live on.

“This was not that much a problem in previous years, when lots of people wanted to work at Foxconn,” said one Foxconn employee who worked in recruitment. “But everyone knows now that the work doesn’t pay. It is hard to recruit your friends.”

Without overtime pay, Foxconn assembly line workers take home around 1,400 yuan ($211) a month after deductions for expenses including food and housing, workers said. Overtime hours can double that, but even then pay is less than the 5,000 yuan or more that they earned a few years ago during the iPhone’s boom, they say.

Workers said that among their colleagues who can’t convince a friend to join, it has become common to pay a stranger 200 yuan to work temporarily in order to qualify for overtime.

“It is a pressure for workers, especially those with families,” said a 26-year-old worker surnamed Zhao. “If you can’t get overtime hours, you barely earn anything.”

Since 2010, there have been at least 25 suicides at FOXCONN. But as you could imagine in China’s state run media, many have not been reported. That number is low.