Workers threaten to jump off roof in Foxconn protest
According to reports out of China, the workers are upset with their wages, despite Foxconn agreeing to improve working conditions.
Foxconn workers in a facility in Wuhan City in China reportedly threatened to jump off a building if their demands for higher wages were not met.
According to the Hong Kong-based activist group Information Centre for Human Rights (Translate), as many as 200 workers from the Foxconn facility climbed a building and said that they would collectively jump if the company didn't address wage issues. Soon after, local police arrived on the scene, and the workers returned to work.
Reuters, which first reported on the news, spoke to someone representing Foxconn owner Hon Hai Precision Industry, who said the protest was not actually a strike, and involved only new workers to the plant.
The protest, however big or small, comes just weeks after Foxconn agreed to improve working conditions and increase pay at its facilities. The Fair Labor Association, which investigated Foxconn at Apple's request, found last month that the company had employees working more than 60 hours of weekly overtime. In addition, 60 percent of Foxconn workers said that they weren't being paid enough to "meet their basic needs."
In response, Foxconn said that it would reduce working hours and ensure that its employees' pay would be kept at a sustainable level.
Still, not all of the company's workers were happy with the results of the audit. Subsequent reports out of China reveal that employees don't want to work less for fear of being paid less. Others have indicated that they'd like to work more than they had previously.
It's not immediately clear if the protest related to working fewer hours in the coming weeks when the new overtime policy is instated or something else that might impact wages. But according to Hon Hai Precision, the employees have all gone back to work.
Corrected at 2:42 p.m. PT to clarify the role of the workers in the Wuhan City facility.