Your beautiful new shiny Apple iPad or iPhone is "designed in California and made in China".It's made at the Foxconn factory at Shenzhen, which is massive and employs up to 400,000 people.
But it's had bad publicity recently, because of a spate of suicides by workers amid allegations of poor pay and long hours. Apple was not happy with this and Steve Jobs himself said it was being investigated.
A quick PR campaign was mounted and it was announced that wages would be increased - by as much as 60 per cent.
All looked good and it seemed Apple would keep its caring-sharing image.
Now it's reported that Foxconn may well start to pay its workers more in the short term, but it's planning to massively scale down the Shenzhen "campus" ( as it calls it) if not close it completely. Apparently, the plan is to move work to its bases in India, Vietnam and Taiwan, where, of course, it can continue to pay low wages to manufacture Apple's profitable products as well as those for Dell, HP, Sony and others.
So, after being offered pay rises, the workers now face being thrown out of their jobs.
I wonder how that will help the worrying suicide rate.
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