News

Chinese Foxconn plant reopens after mass staff brawl

Company claims factory shutdown will not affect the firm's product output.

25 Sep 2012

A Foxconn Technology Group factory in northern China has reopened after a mass staff brawl resulted in production being shut down.

The closure is understood to have disrupted production at the site for around 24 hours. However, the company has confirmed to Reuters that the site's closure would not affect the company's output.

The Foxconn factory was shut down yesterday following a dispute involving 2,000 of its staff, which led to more than 40 of them being injured.

The brawl, which broke out at 11pm on Sunday night, resulted in production at the plant in northern China being stopped.

Foxconn confirmed the dispute started in a dormitory near the plant and was broken up by around 5,000 police officers.

Guest editor's thoughts:

"Despite improvements to working conditions, Foxconn is still suffering from employee unrest. Although the company claims this latest incident is non-work related, clearly more needs to be done to provide an environment where incidents of this kind are less likely to occur," says Ken Deeks, Byte Night founder.

"The plant is closed today for investigation," Louis Woo, a Foxconn spokesman said.

According to On Xinhua, China's official news agency, a senior government official from Taijuan City said the incident started between workers from Shandong Province and Henan Province.

"The cause of this dispute is under investigation by local authorities and we are working closely with them in this process, but it appears not to have been work-related," Foxconn said.

This is not the first time Foxconn has been under the news spotlight. In 2010, 18 workers threw themselves off company buildings and 14 died.

Foxconn is understood to have made an effort to improve its factories' working conditions by shortening staff shifts, paying their employees on time and compensating them for doing overtime.