South China Morning Post
Advertisement
Advertisement
Foxconn
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Young customers looks at iPhones at an Apple Store in Los Angeles. The world’s largest iPhone plant, located in the landlocked Chinese province of Henan, is raising signing bonuses for returning workers to keep up with production amid a local Covid-19 outbreak. Photo: AP Photo
TechBig Tech

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
Foxconn
Ann Cao
Ann Caoin Shanghai
Why you can trust SCMP

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 same bonus package was previously offered last July, when the factory was ramping up production of the new iPhone 13 series, according to the South China Morning Post’s review of past recruitment advertisements.

World’s largest iPhone factory keeps production going amid latest pandemic scare

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.

Meanwhile a recent surge in Omicron and Delta coronavirus cases in Henan province, of which Zhengzhou is the capital, has led authorities to place quarantine restrictions on people leaving and entering the region.

02:12

The story of Terry Gou and Foxconn

The story of Terry Gou and Foxconn

Henan reported 68 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, one of them in Zhengzhou, adding to a total of 2,471 cases.

While Foxconn is offering the highest signing bonuses to returning workers, it has also promised an 8,500 yuan reward for new recruits hired through the company’s internal referral programme, as well as 1,000 yuan for the corresponding referrer. New joiners who applied on their own will get a 9,000 yuan bonus.

Foxconn, officially known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Monday.

The company has previously said that all its Zhengzhou-based workers had been subject to multiple rounds of mandatory coronavirus nucleic acid tests.

Foxconn’s sprawling production lines in Zhengzhou – spread across the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone, the Zhengzhou Economic and Technological Development Area, and Zhongmou County – are located in low-risk zones for Covid-19 infections.

The Zhengzhou production complex, which employs more than a quarter of a million workers, plays a vital role in Apple’s global supply chain.

In comparison, Foxconn’s plant near the southern Indian city of Chennai, which was briefly shut down last month during a workers’ protest over food poisoning, employs only around 17,000 people.

 

2