According to worker watchdog group, China Labor Watch, thousands of Chinese workers at a Foxconn plant have gone on strike. The labor dispute arrives on the heels of recent riots and other reports of unrest within Apple's iPhone 5 manufacturing supplier.
China Labor Watch issued a press release today, stating that as many as four-thousand Foxconn employees created a work stoppage, protesting current working conditions. Allegedly, increased attention to quality standards has led to the unrest.
Only two weeks ago, thousands of laborers at the Taiyuan, China facility erupted into a brawl. Apparently, increased pressure on quality control inspectors has caused the current conflict, as QA agents are facing difficult working conditions from both management and fellow workers.
"Quality control inspectors fell [into] conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures," reads the China Labor Watch report. "The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors."
Strangely, we're unable to find any mention of the strike within Chinese media. But considering the scale of last month's riot -- which lead to serious injuries, and some unsubstantiated reports of fatalities -- this hardly sounds unrealistic.
Of course, another work stoppage is just the latest in a series of events to hinder iPhone 5 production. Widely circulated reports indicated Sharp found the new display difficult to produce, and pre-orders of the new iOS device were almost immediately pushed back by weeks.
Trade unions hold a historically strange position in a country like China. The term "strike," in the sense it's used in regards to this Foxconn situation, is a bit different than a union-sanctioned stoppage. While unions do exist in China, they are in many ways more like state-controlled organizations. Foxconn workers are not operating under a collective bargaining agreement.
But labor unrest is growing in China, and pockets of dissent are trying desperately to form independent labor organizations. Apple, nor Foxconn, has yet to comment on the alleged work stoppage.
Image Source: China Labor Watch
Follow this article's author, Matt Clark on Twitter.
