Riots Rock Foxconn’s Taiyuan Plant

Richard Lai is reporting that more than 2,000 employees of the Taiyuan Foxconn plant rioted last night, causing damage on the factory campus after a guard allegedly hit a worker at 10pm.

The Taiyuan plant is notorious for their mandatory overtime requirements. Quoth Lai:

An undercover report from August mentioned that the Taiyuan plant processed the back casing of the iPhone 5. It also highlighted the company’s harsh management as well as “practically compulsory” over-time work. We don’t doubt that this riot escalated due to dissatisfaction over working conditions.

Lai found some video from the factory and writers on Weibo are reporting further information about the incident.

UPDATE – Taiyuan factory workers went on strike last March although this is apparently the first “fight” in the factory. The Weibo postings were pulled down and the images are now gone.

Reuters is reporting that Foxconn’s representative Louis Woo said:

“The fight is over now … we’re still investigating the cause of the fight and the number of people involved.” He said the fight happened in the workers’ dormitory facilities.

via Teiba