China Labor Watch has announced that the iPhone 5 production lines stop as the workers producing the iPhone 5 at Foxconn factory have gone on strike. Pressure on the Foxconn emplyees in Apple’s assembly factories, due to the delays and retail shortage, quality control measures, and inadequate training has led to a strike among thousands of workers.
China Labor Watch reports that 3-4 thousands workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant went on strike earlier today due to overtime demands and lack of training. Foxconn has “raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills,” According to the report. All this resulted into fights between supervisors and workers, and ultimately the strike.
This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to 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. The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors… The majority of workers who participated in this strike were workers from the OQC (onsite quality control) line.
Apparently, the quality control concerns were related to the scratches on the exterior of the iPhone 5.
It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers. With such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. On top of this, they were not permitted to have a vacation during the holiday. This combination of factors led to the strike.
It’s unclear at this point how this strike will affect iPhone 5 supplies. China Labor Watch said today that “multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day.”
via [Gizmodo]