Foxconn to Build New Plant in Central China, Bringing 300,000 Jobs

Foxconn is to build a new plant in Zhengzhou City, capital of central China's Henan Province, municipal authorities said Tuesday.

Foxconn and senior officials of Zhenzhou and Henan are working on the details of an agreement to build the plant, said a spokesman for the municipal government.

Zhengzhou has allocated land for the plant. The first phase construction will cover 133 hectares, he added.

Henan has launched a massive recruitment drive for the new plant. Recruitment advertisements have been posted in many residential communities in Zhengzhou as well as on the official websites of other Henan cities.

The new plant is to employ 300,000 people in the long run. About 100,000 people are to be recruited in the near future, an official with the provincial employment promotion department said while declining to give his name.

"Workers can expect a monthly income from 2,500 yuan to 3,000 yuan with wages of no less than 2,000 yuan per month." The pay is about the same as that of Foxconn's plants in Shenzhen City in south China's Guangdong Province.

Newly recruited workers are to intern in Foxconn's Shenzhen plants before working in the new plant.

The provincial government will subsidize employees of the new Foxconn plant during their training. Each worker can receive up to 600 yuan per month, the official said.

Foxconn came under fire after 10 workers committed suicide by jumping from factory and dorm buildings in its industrial complex in Shenzhen from July 2009 to May 2010.

On June 1, Foxconn increased the monthly wages of assembly workers from 900 yuan to 1,200 yuan. On June 6, Foxconn announced another pay hike: the assembly workers' monthly wages were to be raised to 2,000 yuan since October 1.

After being criticized for overworking staff and having strict management of its dormitories, Foxconn announced June 25 two property-management firms will run its staff dormitories in the Foxconn complex in Shenzhen.

Foxconn signed agreements with Shenzhen-based CATIC Property Management Co. and Kaiyuan Property Management Co. to outsource the daily management of the dormitories. The dormitories accommodate 220,000 of Foxconn's 450,000 employees in Shenzhen.

With a population of more than 100 million, Henan is China's most populous province. The province has 22 million people working elsewhere as migrant workers, including 157,000 of Foxconn's 800,000 workers in China.

Foxconn, the world's biggest electronics contractor, makes high-tech gadgets for multinationals, such as Apple's iphones and ipads.