Ethical Treatment of Employees in China
Introduction
Foxconn Technology is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company, its’ headquarter is in Twaiwan. It is the world's largest electronics contractor manufacturer, and rank as 60th in the Fortune Global 500 in the 2011.
The Foxconn is a giant contract manufacturer and its’ business extend to America, Europ and Japan’s electronics and information technology companies. Principle products that the company manufactures include the Blackberry, the iPad, iPhone, Roberts, and ships.
China is an important area to the firm. They almost employ millions people over the mainland, and approximately 40% of the world’s consumer electronics are made in People Republic of China (Foxconn).
However, Foxconn has been involved in several controversies relating to how it manages employees in China. There has been a history of suicide at its factories blamed on working conditions; “In January 2012, about 150 Foxconn employees threatened to commit mass-suicide in protest at their working conditions.” In the work department, some workers get so much works that they dream to use tools to produce items in the sleeping. Here I just confidently make a conclusion that management in the firm faces problems.
The Fair Labor Association spent nearly a full month in investigating specific situations that Foxconn employees face. Discussed below, are the observations.
Company management system tend to Taiwan’s military institution. Supervisors usually mistreat workers when they do not fulfill this supervisor’s expectations. It is common to see that managers punish employees physically and mentally. For example, managers sometimes spank workers or put them in closed closet if they do not obey manager’s plans. By the way, managers use those cases to threat and force other worker to comply. Common workers absorb and deliver so many negative emotions in working environments that they cannot enjoy their own jobs and lives. What about managers? When the reporters interview the Foxconn factory, some managers also complain of losing individuals’ values when they face their supervisors. Therefore, to get emotional balances, some managers who get madness by their supervisors abreact their negative passions to their inferiors. It is also a reason why some managers punish workers physically. In a word, most employees make livings with bad emotions in the Foxconn, no matter what positions they stand on.
The Foxconn Technology group is standing on a hierarchical system. Because the firm originally came from Taiwan, Taiwanese managers are superior to mainland managers whose abilities and positions are similar. The difference, though, is in the salaries. Taiwanese employees always receive higher salaries than mainland colleagues. As a result, most of the mainland employees feel insulted. A second act of unfairness is that managers can cut workers’ bonus off unfairly without a just reason. Some workers tell reporters that they sometimes get blackmails from their supervisors. This blackmail usually includes alcohol or cigarettes, that are not very expensive. If those workers refuse to bribe,they find their monthly bonuses are less than their colleagues, even if they have same work timetables.
One of the significant findings, not surprisingly, was overtime work, and it also is a direct reason to make those miserable workers choose to commit suicide. According to the labor laws in the People Republic of China, normally, workers cannot work over 8 hours. On special occasions, though, firms can extend times to 3 more hours a day. Monthly extension times cannot be over 36 hours. However, it is usual that extending times are over 60 hours, some factory’s come to 100 hours. In addition, to encourage employees to work overtime, the Foxconn pay very low salaries to workers during the legal time, so common employees usually tend to work overtime to get nice pay. This is the secret that the total average salary of both firms combined is high even though the fundamentally average salary is low.
Foxconn Technology also cheats new and young employees to make disadvantage contracts that limit their rights and freedoms. For example, some contracts claim that employees are willing to work longer than law’s limitations, but employee do not get noticed when they sign their signatures, this is because those clause are in some secret corners. When workers try changing unfitted work schedules, managers usually use those unethical contracts to reject those requests and threat their bonus if they still insist on reducing work time.