The announcement Saturday that Foxconn Technology — one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers — will sharply raise salaries and reduce overtime at its Chinese factories signals that pressure from workers, international markets and concerns among Western consumers about working conditions is driving a fundamental shift that could accelerate an already rapidly changing Chinese economy.But the true meaning of Foxconn’s reforms, analysts say, will depend in part on how effectively the company can remake an economic system that has relied for much of the last decade on luring migrants to work cheaply for long hours in mammoth factories building smartphones, computers and other electronics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/technology/pressures-drive-change-at-chinas-electronics-giant-foxconn.htmlAlso see:Apple faces its ‘Nike moment’ as ABC Nightline goes inside Foxconn
Bill Weir of ABC News has provided pictures from inside Foxconn’s assembly lines where it makes Apple devices such as the iPad.Besides the video, there is also a photo gallery, showing how thousands of migrant workers show up on a Monday morning, how people sleep eight to a room in the dormitories (where often some will sleep while others get up to work), how gift-wrapped items are done by hand, and the telling line that “The average starting salary at Foxconn is around $285 a month or $1.78 an hour. Even with 80 hours of overtime it considered so low that the Chinese government does not deduct any payroll taxes.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/20/apple-nightline-foxconn