In China, employees who are furious with their employers tend to voice out their sentiments in a different manner. While in other countries, people take to the streets and air their concerns, in China workers simply threaten their employers with a mass suicide over an unsettled disputes over their salaries.
Not to generalize the whole nation, but workers from the electronics giant Foxconn went to the roof of their company headquarters in Wuhan, China. Though they threatened their bosses that they’d kill themselves, all managed to step down from the rooftop unhurt after hours of negotiations with the City’s Mayor.
According to reports, Foxconn (which builds Xbox 360s for Microsoft Corp.) did not give their employees a pay raise. They were then given a choice to either go back to work or relinquish their post and be given a month’s pay for each year they had served the company.
A number of workers quit but the company did not give them the aforementioned separation pays. This prompted the individuals to set up a protest on the rooftop a building.
It’s good to note that Foxconn also supplies Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia with kits.
In a statement released by Foxconn, it said that, “the incident was successfully and peacefully resolved. The welfare of our employees is our top priority.”
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “we take working conditions in the factories that manufacture our products very seriously. We are investigating this issue.”
