Foxconn factory workers to get 30 percent raise

“Production line workers at Foxconn’s southern China manufacturing hub will get a 30 percent pay rise, as top customer Apple Inc. called recent suicides at the plant troubling but said the site was ‘not a sweatshop.’ The string of deaths at the site have focused attention on working conditions in a region experiencing growing labor unrest. In his first public comments on the problem, Apple CEO Steve Jobs expressed his concern,” Argin Chang, Roger Tung, Kelvin Soh and Faith Hung report for Reuters.

“‘It’s a difficult situation,’ Jobs said at the All Things Digital conference in California on Tuesday. ‘We’re trying to understand right now, before we go in and say we know the solution,'” Chang, Tung, Soh and Hung report.

“Taiwan contract electronics maker Hon Hai Precision Industry, the owner of Foxconn, said on Wednesday that the cash component of wages would rise by 30 percent effective immediately, more than the 20 percent rise the company had talked about late last month,” Chang, Tung, Soh and Hung report.

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