Remember the Foxconn announcement saying in response to all the hoopla they are raising employee wages?
Well all is not what it seems… The Huffing Post reads:
While Foxconn has put a positive spin on news it was raising wages of its Chinese workers by 16-25 percent from this month, many workers at the Longhua plant said management had simultaneously imposed fees for once-free dormitory rooms and food, eroding their take-home pay. China has set a target for at least 13 percent growth in wages until 2015, as gnawing inflation for consumer goods and food further corrodes blue collar savings.
”The pay rise is useless,” said another worker surnamed Xiang. “We just pay more for other things.”
In a February 17 statement announcing the wage increase, Foxconn said: “As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn’s China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments.”
Analysts such as Feng Yu of Sinolink say the impact of the wage rise on Foxconn’s profits was unlikely to be significant, with wages only representing around 10 percent of the production costs of high value-added technology manufacturers. Foxconn’s moves inland to tap lower labor costs had helped.
We can’t relax when employers make moves that make good PR snippets. We still have to pay attention and realize that
