Foxconn plans to relocate 300,000 jobs from Shenzhen to a new factory in central China's Henan province, and shift some other production to Tianjin , Qingdao and Wuhan after a spate of worker suicides and rising labour costs in Shenzhen.
Xinhua reported yesterday that Foxconn's new factory in Zhengzhou , Henan's provincial capital, would occupy a 133-hectare site provided by the city government. Henan, one of the mainland's most populous provinces, is the original home of about 22 million migrant workers.
Assembly line workers at Foxconn's two Shenzhen factories said yesterday that they had been told about its relocation plans. Many said they would not move with Taiwanese-owned Foxconn, which makes iPads and iPhones for Apple as well as computers for Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
Workers said they had been told that only 100,000 of the 400,000 workers at Foxconn's Shenzhen plants would remain in the city to manufacture the profitable Apple gadgets while the rest of the company's production would be relocated to other parts of the country.
Authorities from the Henan city of Hebi issued a notice on Friday seeking to recruit 100,000 people for training by Foxconn in Shenzhen, followed by jobs at its Henan plant.
The notice, posted on the city government's website, said workers would be paid a basic salary of 1,200 yuan (HK$1,370) a month during three months of probation and their monthly income would range from 1,600 yuan to 2,300 yuan. The pay is the same as that given to workers at Foxconn's Shenzhen factories, where workers won a 30 per cent pay rise this month.
