Foxconn Explains Away Claims of Abused Employees [Foxconn]

Not only does Foxconn ” categorically reject” last week’s shocking survey of 1,736 employees who told of overtime, lack of promised payrises and even violence, but they think that their 937,000 employees work in a ” safe and positive” environment.

The full statement is below in your parsing, but key points seem to be that yet one more payrise came into effect as of October 1st (which employees will see in their paychecks come November), and that of the 7.6 per cent of their employees who are interns, all of them receive compensation and benefits, contrary to what surveyed workers told the university volunteers collecting data for their report.

All of last week’s points from the leaked report appear to were addressed in Foxconn’s statement, however the difficulty of management inflicting violence against the juniors was shrugged off as being false, with all employees and interns being treated ” with the very best level of respect.” Any concerned employees are asked to contact the human resources department at Foxconn, to voice their concerns.

What we know of Foxconn, from the last year of watching countless suicides and stories of abuse, is that they’re very smooth at brushing aside any harmful PR situations. Terry Gou , Foxconn’s CEO, invited Chinese media to view the oft-attacked Shenzhen factory a couple of months bac k, where he took take pleasure in showing them the Olympic-sized swimming pool and other good points of working at the plant. Unfortunately, his wooing of the media was not enough to forestall several more suicides from happening.

Foxconn Technology Group strongly and categorically rejects reports within the Chinese and international media which might be attributed to investigate by academics and students alleging worker abuse, illegal labor practices, and dangerous working conditions at our operations in China.

We are responding to the media coverage because we believe you will need to correct these unsubstantiated allegations which many media outlets are treating as facts without giving our company a chance to offer our side of the problem.

Foxconn is definitely not perfect, but we take our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we are committed to giving each one of our more than 937,000 employees in China a safe and positive working environment and compensation and benefits which might be competitive with all of our industry peers. We are also committed to continuing to contribute to the economy of the cities where we operate and respecting all government laws and regulations, including those relating to employment, overtime work, and the treatment of our workforce, and to cooperating with accredited labor unions to deal with issues which might be raised regarding any employee matters.
We want to handle specific areas which have been highlighted inside the media reports:

Minimum Wage Increases

Effective October 1, we instituted across-the-board increases within the minimum wage payments in all of our operations in China. This move follows three months of worker evaluations that have ended in some 85% of our workforce qualifying for this increase with the remainder 15% having another evaluation because they’ve not yet passed the evaluation process. This increase and the review standards are component to our goals of ensuring that we maintain a high-quality workforce and that we are the employer-of-choice wherever we operate. According to this, our objective with these increases is to verify we remain some of the highest paying employers in our industry.

The increase in each location, which employees will see in their paychecks for October as a result of be received inside the first week of November, relies on a review of government-mandated wage levels, local cost of living, and industry wage levels in that location. With regards to Shenzhen, where more than 500,000 of our employees work, the minimum wage has been significantly increased to RMB 2,000 per 30 days and that’s moreover benefits including free or subsidized housing and meals, medical coverage, and other government required insurance and trust funds. Contrary to the allegations included in some media reports, these wage increases have not included any reduction or elimination of any benefits or payments.

Overtime

Chinese government law states that employees can legally request overtime work in far more than the govt.-mandated maximum of 36 hours per 30 days and our policy is to honor such voluntary requests but to also guantee that such work doesn’t exceed the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) guidelines of no more than 60 hours every week including overtime which might be the accepted industry standards. Workers are paid 1.5 times the elemental salary when working overtime on weekdays and a pair of times the fundamental salary when working overtime on weekends and three times the fundamental salary when working overtime on national holidays. All overtime is voluntary and all overtime is compensated in compliance with Chinese government law.

Average monthly overtime from June to September for staff volunteering for such work was 57.3 hours for June, 58.5 hours for July, 59.7 hours for August, and 63.1 hours for September (to atone for the Mid-Autumn Festival), that is well in the EICC guidelines.
According to the significant salary increases we’ve instituted, we are working to bring overtime hours all the way down to no more than 36 hours per thirty days from the current EICC standard and we are doing this throughout the hiring of more workers and the expansion of our operations to regions which are in the direction of the home provinces of nearly all of our workforce. While we remain compliant with government laws and regulations regarding overtime, our goal is to fulfill the target of 36 hours within 2011. The brand new wage levels will be sure that our workers maintain an identical or higher income levels with these reduced overtime hours they’d if they worked more hours under the previous compensation arrangement.

Student Interns

Like a lot of our industry peers, Foxconn cooperates with accredited vocational and technical schools in China to supply short-term on-the-job training for their students who are aged 16 years and above. While these training programs are administered by the individual schools, who remain liable for general insurance policy for the trainees, Foxconn does provide a whole package of compensation and benefits during these internship periods. This includes housing and meals and medical and accident coverage for all trainees. Foxconn compensation levels for interns are such as that of the fundamental workers and higher than the govt. regulated levels and the typical internship period is between two and six months.

Interns currently comprise 7.6% of our total employee population in China and at no time has this percentage ever exceeded 15% even in the course of the summer peak seasons when more students desire to join the internship program. Interns will not be allowed to have interaction in any job it’s classified as dangerous or hazardous.

While we’ve found a small number of incidents where interns have voluntarily and legally worked overtime hours, we are working hard to institute a ban on any overtime work by interns and we are inside the strategy of ensuring that this significant policy is enforced across all of our operations.

Workplace Safety

Our policy is to strictly abide by government laws and regulations and industry standards to supply not only proper protection to workers but to also provide regular monitoring of the health of workers who could be excited by areas with potential workplace hazards.

We also have very strict workplace safety rules and regulations that have contributed to our firm having one of the vital lowest industrial accident records in Shenzhen. These rules and regulations include reporting all accidents to Central Human Resources, Security, and to the labor union within two hours of each incident. There are incentives in place to encourage such reporting and penalties applied to those that do not follow these guidelines.
Our company policy requires that every one management and supervisory staff treat our employees and interns with the very best level of respect and we’ve formal grievance procedures that each one employees can use should they have got any issues with any aspect of their treatment by anyone associated with Foxconn or any other matter concerning their employment. These procedures are in place and they have got been shown to be effective in resolving issues which have been raised long ago. If any employee or intern, or any third party, understands of any violations of either Chinese government law, our contractual terms with any employee, or any employee or intern grievances, we ask that they give us with the specifics of that matter or that they direct the employee or intern in question to contact our Central Human Resources Department at the relevant work location. The matter will likely be addressed professionally and expeditiously and any violations will probably be immediately rectified.

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This post is tagged: compensation and benefits, human resources department, olympic sized swimming pool, university volunteers, unsubstantiated allegations, working conditions