When Apple introduced the iPhone 5, it noted: “We’ve developed manufacturing processes that are our most complex and ambitions. Never before have we built a product with this extraordinary level of fit and finish.”
While the end result of these complex methods — i.e. the iPhone 5 — appears to be making customers happy, the processes themselves seem to be causing problems at the factories. A new report is out this afternoon that thousands of Foxconn workers have gone on strike due to issues with iPhone 5 production…
China Labor Watch reports:
“At 1:00PM on October 5 (Beijing time), a strike occurred at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory that, according to workers, involved three to four thousand production workers. In addition to demanding that workers work during the holiday, Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers.”
Essentially, workers are being asked to build extremely sophisticated things without being properly instructed on how to do so. And this has led to a drop in production quality, which then led to increased work hours.
The report also says that this has caused several fights to break out on the factory lines between workers and quality control staff. And all of this combined with all of the pressure pushed Foxconn employees over the edge.
Even though 4,000 workers is relatively small compared to Foxconn’s army, it’s possible that the strike could very well affect iPhone 5 production. Earlier today we reported that iPhone 5 supply is already extremely limited.