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Taipei. A group of Taiwanese scholars wants Foxconn Technology to end what it calls a rigid and inhumane management style at its mammoth factory compound in Southern China.

Their petition comes in the wake of a recent string of suicides at Foxconn’s Shenzhen facility, which employs and houses more than 300,000 workers, many from impoverished backgrounds in the rural mainland.

Taiwanese and other labor activists have long accused Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company, of overworking its Chinese employees and forcing them to keep pace on assembly lines that move too fast.

The company denies the allegations, but recently announced two raises, more than doubling the base pay of workers in Shenzhen to 2,000 yuan ($293) per month.

Foxconn makes iPads and iPhones for Apple, and also manufactures computers for Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Social scientist Yang You-ren at Taichung’s Tunghai University began the petition this month stating that he and fellow academics were appalled by Foxconn’s labor policies.

“Foxconn’s militaristic management style relies on scolding and sometimes even beating front-line workers, practices we believe led the recent spate of suicides among workers,” Yang said on Monday.

“If the company does not change its tactics, there will be more suicides in the future.”

In the petition, the scholars said that recent pay raises do not address the problem. In addition to Foxconn, the Chinese government and Apple are named in the petition for allowing the poor working conditions at the Shenzhen factory to continue.

Over 180 people have signed the petition, including renowned sociologist Lin Thung-hong at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and architecture professor Hsia Chu-joe from National Taiwan University.

Responding to critics, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou told a shareholders meeting this month that the company had built dormitories and recreational facilities at all China plants.

Foreign companies that rely on China as a source of cheap labor are finding it harder to attract and keep workers, who, in contrast to other workers as recently as five years ago, are demanding significantly better pay and working conditions.


Associated Press