Apple’s biggest iPhone plant woos workers with fat bonuses amid Omicron outbreak in central China
- Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory offers extra cash incentives to experienced workers to return to the production line
- The approaching Lunar New Year holiday and a surge in local Covid-19 cases create new recruitment challenges
The world’s largest iPhone factory is offering former workers extra cash to return to its production line, as a local Omicron Covid-19 outbreak disrupts travel to the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.
According to a job posting by the Zhengzhou campus of Foxconn Technology Group, the biggest assembler of Apple handsets, the Taiwan company’s iPhone component production unit known as innovative Product Enclosure Business Group (iPEBG) is giving returning workers a signing bonus of 9,500 yuan (US$1,470), in addition to a monthly income of 6,865 yuan.
The plant had raised rewards for former workers from 5,500 yuan to 8,000 yuan in June, before deciding to increase the amount even more.
The increased incentives this time around show Foxconn’s urgency in hunting for experienced workers ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which goes from January 31 to February 6, when migrant workers across China usually return home to reunite with families.
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Henan reported 68 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, one of them in Zhengzhou, adding to a total of 2,471 cases.
