Nearly 3,000 workers at an iPhone 5 production facility have gone on strike. The Foxconn-controlled Zhengzhou factory watched on Friday as the workers at its onsite quality control line walked off the job for the entire day.
According to China Labor Watch , the workers were unhappy with the tightening quality control requirements thrust upon them alongside a mandatory shift for the holiday shopping season. Those conditions have led to increased violence at the Foxconn plants.
The location is the same factory where 2,000 different factory workers walked out last month, once again shutting down production for a full day.
According to China Labor Watch :
“There was a fight between workers and quality control inspectors in area K that led to the damage in inspection room CA, the injury of some people, and the hospitalization of others. After this, another similar incident occurred in area K, once again leading to quality control inspectors getting beat up. Yesterday, inspectors in area L received physical threats. When inspectors reported these issues to factory management, the management simply ignored and turned their back on the issue. For these reasons, all day and night shift inspectors carried out a work stoppage today that paralyzed the production lines.”
The strike at the Zhengzhou factory follows a violent protest at a Foxconn factory in September. During the Taiyuan protest, more than 2,000 workers out of 79,000 total workers broke out into violent acts. More than 40 people were taken to the hospital following the September 24 attack.
Foxconn workers regularly work sixty, even eighty hour work weeks, a condition Apple has promised to remedy but has worked slowly towards fixing.