Foxconn Apple workers Rights

About 3500 workers on 5th October went on a strike at Foxconn factory located in Zhengzhou, Henan Province in China (Lowensohn par 1). The workers claimed that, the strike was caused by stringent quality demands on workers. These demands included indentations standards of 0.02mm and no scratches were to be found on any iPhone. Workers failed to produce any iPhone that met those stringent quality demands. This results in considerable stress on workers. Apart from this, workers were denied their vacations even when due. These issues among others caused the strike. The demands for strict quality adherence by Apple could have been a response to increased cases of cosmetic damage on the iPhone. According to Lowensohn (par 2), five customers purchased new iPhones that had nicks on their aluminum antenna, in other cases, the antenna band had a warping, in spite of the fact that these were new iPhones. Apple Company did not give any statement about the strike and the allegations made by the workers.Background informationEven before the recent strike, Foxconn Apple factory had been in news all for the wrong reasons. For instance, in May 2010, several media reports revealed that Foxconn workers were being underpaid and worked for long overtime hours (Qiang par 11). Following these reports, Foxconn promised to review its wages upwards, and to limit the numbers of hours allowed for overtime. Prior to the media coverage, workers usually worked for more than 300 hours monthly, comprising of about 120 hours of overtime. At the time of the strike, it was established that Foxconn had limited overtime hours to not more than 80 hours per month in many of its departments. Whereas this shows an improvement in this area, the 80 hours of overtime per month is still almost double of what is allowed by Chinese labor laws. This means that workers at the factory still are pushed past logical limits (Qiang par 11).China labor watch carried out an investigation on Foxconn Apple factories from January to April 2012, the investigation incorporated surveys from works from different Foxconn factories to measure different working conditions (Qiang par 12). The finding s of this report mainly was based first hand observations as well surveys from workers. The report established that Foxconn was violating workers right in all its Apple supplier factors. Some of the factories had very hard working conditions. This section highlights these findings.Wages and working hours at Foxconn factoryAccording to Beijing review, Foxconn as at 2011 had over 500,000 workers stationed at Shenzhen city (Qiang par16). Faced with increased pressure from Apple and other companies that contract Foxconn, and coupled by the need to maximize profits, as at 2011, Foxconn, is reported to have set its monthly wages at 950 Yuan (147 USD), for Chengdu factories and 1200 Yuan ( 186USD) for Foxconn Shenzhen, production line workers working 40 hours per week. Though this amount is the legal lowest local wage rate, …