Foxconn to it's employees: If you want wages you can live on, fine, but we'll move the production away from here to someplace where people will settle for less. Except that in this case the salary one can live on is literally enough not to commit a suicide. It appears Southern China is too expensive for large foreign mobile phone component manufacturers and they have to relocate to Central China.
If you recall the stream of China news where employees had killed themselves, assumedly due to unworkable conditions or salaries, you probably didn't expect a turn for sheer malevolence after salary raises were announced. We'll, today's news adds insult to injury as Foxconn heads to Hebei.
Quick to pass the puck, Foxconn said Apple hadn't approved of the salary increases, which is the reason for the move.
The news is here (Yahoo!)
To me it just seems a step up from the old-fashioned "twirling my mustache" kind of evil to a more Doctor Evil type of supervillainry, where the next step is to move the workers to a lightless underground bunker to work on a death laser.
For a little background, you can read a Reuters article on Apple / Foxconn security, at the end there's a story from February when a photographer taking pictures of a component factory was assaulted but facility guards and was later told by the police that Foxconn enjoys a special status. No charges were pressed, obviously.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G3XA20100217
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