Foxconn Workers Labor Under Guard After Riot Shuts Plant

Security teams wearing riot helmets and wielding plastic shields marched around a Foxconn Technology Group factory in northern China in a sign that tensions remain high after a fight between 2,000 workers halted production.

Foxconn’s complex, home to 79,000 workers in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, still shows damage caused by a Sept. 23 clash in which a dormitory fight escalated into a riot finally quelled by hundreds of security guards and police. More than 40 people were hospitalized in the melee that left shattered windows and damaged parked cars across the campus. The unrest underscores the social strains of a Chinese export- manufacturing model where thousands of workers, mostly young, work long hours in military-style conditions, sleeping in dormitories and surrounded by security guards. “The guards here use gangster style to manage,” Fang Zhongyang, 23, said outside campus gates. “We are not against following rules but you have to tell us why. They won’t explain things and we feel like we cannot communicate with them.”