Foxconn to raise wages again at China plant

BEIJING - Electronics maker Foxconn Technologies, under fire for its working practices after a string of worker suicides, has decided to up salaries by two-thirds at its Shenzhen factory, state media said on Friday.

News agency Xinhua quoted company spokesman Liu Kun as saying the roughly 66 percent pay rise for assembly line workers, the second this year, would bring salaries to 2,000 yuan ($298.9) per month. It starts from this month.

The increase will benefit about 85 percent of workers at the Shenzhen factory, the report added.

Foxconn increased salaries by 30 percent in June, from 900 yuan to 1,200 yuan per month, for its Shenzhen employees.

Eleven suicides this year at the sprawling manufacturing base has brought intense scrutiny of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, the owner of Foxconn, which makes the iPhone and other products for Apple and also counts Dell and Hewlett-Packard among its clients.

The company has tried addressing the problem by improving living conditions for workers, organising activities to boost moral and bumping up wages.

Hon Hai said in August it would have as many as 1.3 million workers in China by the end of 2011, up from 920,000 now, but would focus the expansion away from its increasingly expensive Shenzhen plant.

Foxconn is expanding aggressively inland, away from Shenzhen which is in the Pearl River Delta area, where wages are lower and workers are more plentiful.

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EPZ, IP firms to fall short of 23,000 workers

HCMC – Companies at HCMC’s export processing zones (EPZ) and industrial parks (IP) will fall short of a combined 23,000 workers, said a job placement official.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, head of the Job Center of the HCMC Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza), told the Daily on Monday that the enterprises would need 49,000 new workers this year for their new export orders and production expansion plans.

However, Tung added, his center and others around the city would be able to supply only 26,000 workers, leading to a shortage of 23,000.

“Given a recovery of production, producers are in need of more workers, especially unskilled ones,” he said. “But it’s hard for them to employ.”

The sectors where labor demand is the strongest include packaging, garment, electronics, mechanical engineering and foodstuff production. Garment makers alone want 6,000 new workers, electronics enterprises about 2,500 and mechanical engineering firms around 2,500.

“From now to the year-end, our job center could find only 5,000 more workers,” said Tung of the Hepza job center. The center, he noted, will intensify recruitments from vocational schools around the city and from other provinces.  

Tung said almost all enterprises at the EPZs and IPs had raised wages too attract more workers. The average monthly wage is some VND2.5 million, VND500,000 higher than before.

Hepza began last year to give priority to new projects that use modern production technologies, particularly those in the mechanical engineering and electronics sectors, to reduce the heavy reliance on unskilled labor and thus avoid shortages of such labor.

But the city is developing seven new IPs and expanding some operational IPs with a total area of about 3,000 hectares, so the labor shortage is seen intenser in the coming time.

The city now has three EPZs and 10 IPs, which are home to 1,200 enterprises employing 252,000 workers.

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EPZ, IP firms to fall short of 23,000 workers

HCMC – Companies at HCMC’s export processing zones (EPZ) and industrial parks (IP) will fall short of a combined 23,000 workers, said a job placement official.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, head of the Job Center of the HCMC Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza), told the Daily on Monday that the enterprises would need 49,000 new workers this year for their new export orders and production expansion plans.

However, Tung added, his center and others around the city would be able to supply only 26,000 workers, leading to a shortage of 23,000.

“Given a recovery of production, producers are in need of more workers, especially unskilled ones,” he said. “But it’s hard for them to employ.”

The sectors where labor demand is the strongest include packaging, garment, electronics, mechanical engineering and foodstuff production. Garment makers alone want 6,000 new workers, electronics enterprises about 2,500 and mechanical engineering firms around 2,500.

“From now to the year-end, our job center could find only 5,000 more workers,” said Tung of the Hepza job center. The center, he noted, will intensify recruitments from vocational schools around the city and from other provinces.  

Tung said almost all enterprises at the EPZs and IPs had raised wages too attract more workers. The average monthly wage is some VND2.5 million, VND500,000 higher than before.

Hepza began last year to give priority to new projects that use modern production technologies, particularly those in the mechanical engineering and electronics sectors, to reduce the heavy reliance on unskilled labor and thus avoid shortages of such labor.

But the city is developing seven new IPs and expanding some operational IPs with a total area of about 3,000 hectares, so the labor shortage is seen intenser in the coming time.

The city now has three EPZs and 10 IPs, which are home to 1,200 enterprises employing 252,000 workers.

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• PM sets agenda for insolvent shipbuilder
• Industries ignore local content
• Good response to reforms of People's Councils