Yesterday, reports came in that around 4000 over-worked and under-paid Foxconn employees began to strike, potentially hitching up iPhone 5 production, the stresses of which had pushed them to the breaking point. According to Foxconn, however, everything at the plant in question is just peachy.
The Foxconn Technology Group put it this way in a statement to Reuters:
Any reports that there has been an employee strike are inaccurate. There has been no workplace stoppage in that facility or any other Foxconn facility and production has continued on schedule.
Foxconn did address some issues that happened back on October 1st and 2nd, but makes it clear that those are over and done with, and that they were “immediately addressed and measures [were] taken, including providing additional staff for the lines in question.”
Regardless of what’s actually the case this time, there’s a history of this kind of thing going down, which makes Foxconn’s denial seem sort of dubious. Of course, if something is going down and they are going to come up short on supply, it seems like it would be pretty futile to try and cover up the cause. But that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility. [Reuters]