Apple assembler Foxconn said on Tuesday it has quadrupled bonuses on offer for workers at its Zhengzhou iPhone assembly plant in central China as it seeks to quell discontent over yet another round of COVID curbs in an effort to retain staff.
Yimou Lee and Brenda Goh for Reuters:
Daily bonuses for employees, who are part of a Foxconn unit responsible for making electronics including smartphones at the site, have been raised to 400 yuan ($55) a day for November from 100 yuan, according to the official WeChat account of Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant… It makes most of the phones at the Zhengzhou plant where it employs about 200,000 people, though it has other smaller production sites in India and south China.
The Zhengzhou plant has been rocked by discontent over stringent measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, with several workers fleeing the site over the weekend after complaining about their treatment and provisions via social media.
Foxconn had no choice but to follow government instructions which had put workers in “miserable conditions”, a person familiar with the situation on campus told Reuters, adding that the circumstances caught management by surprise.
Foxconn has not disclosed whether any workers at the Zhengzhou site had been diagnosed with COVID-19 but the executive told the newspaper there had been no severe infections and the company had set up a team to transfer infected staff to quarantine.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, as we wrote yesterday, God forbid, someone might get the sniffles.
The average age of workers on the Foxconn assembly line is 23 years old.
The reactions and overreactions to COVID in some places on this addled rock, even to this day, beggars belief.
The real virus is the panic. – MacDailyNews, March 9, 2020
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Maybe a blessing in disguise…China’s lockdown? Otherwise, the energy crimp would be more substantial. Go Windmills!