A massive brawl between workers broke out at a Chinese Foxconn factory on Monday. The location, in Taiyuan, employees 79,000 people and is responsible for the production of Apple’s iPhone devices. According to local police, a brawl broke out at the Foxconn dormitories at 11:00 PM Sunday night and continued into the early morning on Monday. Over 5,000 police officers were dispatched to the scene where over 2000 factory employees were involved in a massive riot with one another. It is said that 40 people were injured in the scuffle, but there was no word on how severe any of the injuries were.
A police spokesman stated that the fight broke out, “drawing a large crowd of spectators and triggering chaos.” Local authorities believe that the fight was not work related and may have started when a security guard at the plant struck an employee. The struggle lasted for approximately 4 hours before police managed to get a handle on it and a number of people were arrested. We do not know any details concerning an exact number of incarcerations, or specific charges that were filed.
This current event comes at an incredibly terrible time for Apple, considering that the company just launched its iPhone 5 device a couple days ago. There has already been news about the mass of iPhone 5’s that have been sold and the company expressed disdain to pre-order customers that their product surplus had been completely depleted. This left the tech giant with a back log of orders, which they have been attempting to fulfill as rapidly as possible. This worker riot however, is threatening to hinder the back log even more.
Sources are saying that the factory has closed down its operations for the entire day of Monday and that it will not re-open operations until Tuesday morning. It was not expressed whether or not this particular factory is responsible for picking up the slack when it comes to iPhone 5 production, which means we do not know if this will really affect Apple’s growing demand issues at all.
This fight also comes as a potentially terrible strike to Apple’s current affairs in China. There have already been a number of complaints and investigations in to the working conditions at Foxconn factories all over the populous country. It is hopeful that this is not a work related crises, and instead one of a personal issue between workers. It still hasn’t stopped the probing eye of the media though, who is prepped and ready to assume that deteriorating work conditions and low wages are the cause for the late night riot.
Photo Credit: Yahoo News
