Hon Hai Precision Industry, commonly known as Foxconn, has joined a list of manufacturers to reach a licensing agreement with Microsoft over patents associated with Android and Chrome OS. Fine details about the arrangement are being kept under wraps for the sake of confidentiality, but it's said to be Microsoft's… … Read More
Foxconn adds 10,000 Chinese assembly-line workers a week to meet new iPhone demand
Taiwan technology giant Foxconn has been increasing its assembly-line workforce in central China in preparation for the manufacture of a new iPhone, the company and media said Tuesday. Foxconn has been hiring workers in its Zhengzhou plant and will continue to do so to “meet operational…
Don’t believe Apple
When the Chinese factory giant Foxconn – famous for mass suicides and military-style management – announced recently that it would begin allowing workers to elect their own local union leaders, it brought a wave of positive press for its Western customers like Apple. But will it make any difference for Foxconn employees, the workers who make wildly popular products such as iPhones?“The precedent we have for these democratic union elections is not very encouraging,” said Eli Friedman, a professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell. Even if “they’re run reasonably well, and you get some kind of activist” elected as a local union leader, “the problem is when they actually try to do anything for their members, they – as in many places – will face retaliation from management.” Worse, “oftentimes higher levels of the trade union, or the government, will collaborate with management to either make this person’s life incredibly difficult, or just force them from office.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Foxconn denies iPhone link as it freezes China hiring
Taiwan technology giant Foxconn has slowed new hiring at its vast China factories, it said Thursday, but denied the move was linked to weak demand for Apple’s iPhone 5, which it produces. “Due to an unprecedented rate of return of employees following the Chinese New Year holiday…
Former Wired editor’s perverse defense for outsourcing jobs
The story of Chris Anderson’s conversion from talented technology journalist to executive at a company that mass markets surveillance drones is cartoonish enough to be somewhat interesting (read: depressing) unto itself. It would, in fact, be a perfect hard-hitting exposé for Anderson’s old magazine, Wired. But it is nothing compared to the story of him becoming a political activist echoing now-standard corporate talking points that call for more American jobs to be outsourced — or in his sanitized, Tom Friedman-esque portmanteau, “quicksourced.”
This is the subject of Anderson’s New York Times Op-Ed this weekend about how his San Diego-based company is shifting its production production to Tijuana, Mexico.
The New York Times’ perverse defense for outsourcing jobs
The story of Chris Anderson’s conversion from talented technology journalist to executive at a company that mass markets surveillance drones is cartoonish enough to be somewhat interesting (read: depressing) unto itself. It would, in fact, be a perfect hard-hitting expose for Anderson’s old magazine, Wired. But it is nothing compared to the story of him becoming a political activist echoing now-standard corporate talking points that call for more American jobs be outsourced – or in his sanitized, Tom Friedman-esque portmanteau, “quicksourced.”
This is the subject of Anderson’s New York Times op-ed this weekend about how his San Diego-based company is shifting its production production to Tijuana, Mexico.
1,000 Foxconn workers on strike in China
Over 1,000 workers went on strike over working conditions at a plant linked to Foxconn, a rights group said on Saturday, in the latest controversy to hit the Taiwanese technology giant. Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) said the strike erupted at a Foxconn…
