Foxconn employees suffer sexual harassment

By Ma Yujia
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, February 22, 2013
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While hundreds of fans queue outside Apple stores to buy iPhones or mini iPads, what is life like for the thousands of workers at Foxconn factories, the top maker of Apple Inc's iPhones and iPads?

A reporter from a local Qingdao newspaper reports on the daily life of workers in a Foxconn factory in Shanghai, which employs almost 60,000 people.

There is huge demand for young laborers at Foxconn. A large number of job hunters, most of whom are born in the 1990s, were eager to work at the Shanghai Foxconn factory. According to Foxconn recruiting staff, while almost a hundred people are hired every day, many senior workers choose to leave the factory.

Once the job seekers are employed by the factory, they first receive necessary training classes. One of the training contents is how to deal with sexual harassment. However, ironically, the report found that an 18-year-old female worker often was subjected to obscene gestures and sexual harassment from three male colleagues during the sexual harassment training seminar.

The female employee was forced to sit in silence because she was not able to leave the training seminar.

A senior worker in this factory said, "That sort of thing happens a lot. She was just not used to it."

When new workers join the factory for the first day of training, they usually receive severe criticism from leading senior workers, warning new hires against breaking the rules.

A team leader said, "Workers are allowed to go to toilet during two specified time periods each day, both which are only 10 minutes."

Generally speaking, production line workers cannot leave their position at random, unless they can find someone to replace them temporarily.

However, Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun said upon reading the news report that the Foxconn Shanghai factory does not produce Apple products, and only employs around 7,000 workers.

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