By Star Chang, posted Apr 17, 2012 at 11:42 PM, 522 views,

Unwilling to Relocate, Foxconn Workers Protest at the Rooftop

Last week, around 20 Foxconn workers climbed to the rooftop of a building located inside Shenzhen plant for 26 hours to protest a planned move. The employees were protesting the company’s decision to relocate factories from Shenzhen to Huizhou, a city further north in Guangdong province, and urged the company to arrange employment for them in Shenzhen or to lay them off. Foxconn has refused to terminate the workers and said it will arrange jobs for them at other factories in the area or will hold further talks with those who insist on seeing their contracts terminated …

According to local media report, about 200 foxconn workers were unwilling to leave Shenzhen, Foxconn had only managed to assign 150 workers to transfer them to other production lines at the base, but the rest had not been as fortunate. Foxconn has tried to find other work for them in Shenzhen but they were unable to meet the requirements as the tasks were different. The factory is empty and the remaining staff have been waiting without any work or layoff notification, leading them to feel they needed to take some protest action.

A lawyer in Shenzhen said that if the whole factory is relocated, its workers should accompany the move. However, the willingness of the workers is the first thing the company should take into consideration. If the workers are unwilling to relocate, Foxconn should terminate their contracts or arrange a suitable position in Shenzhen in order to meet the country’s labor law. In the meantime, Foxconn did not offer any further comment on the incident.

Look like Foxconn is trying their best to control the running cost of the manufacturing, but at the same time doesn’t want to layoff their labour force. Early this year, more than a hundred Foxconn employees stood on the factory building’s rooftop, threatening to commit suicide if their unemployment compensation are not paid. Nowadays, any Foxocnn workers want to get the attention from their employer, they just need to gather at the rooftop of the Foxconn building, to show a sign of threatening. Somehow, this has becoming an undesirable trend …

SOURCE: CNTV (Chinese translated)