Foxconn and 'A tale of a union'

"The world’s biggest factory empire has never realized its commitment to promote democratic industrial relation and to fulfill its corporate social responsibility. In addition, according to the latest news report from a Chinese newspaper, the promised union elections are in limbo. SACOM urges Foxconn to push forward the democratization of trade union as soon as possible", the group states in a release. On 4 February 2013, the Financial Times reported that Foxconn is going to launch its first ever democratic union elections among its factories with the assistance from Fair Labor Association (FLA). Thus, 'The new generation migrant workers concern programme' research team is established and studies the development of trade union and workers’ expectation on the future union. The report released on 1 May 2013 discovers that although workers generally understand what a labour union is, their understanding on the current “Trade Union Law” in China is weak. More than half of the workers (55.5%) fail to notify both of their legal rights to vote and to stand as a candidate for the union. Worse still, workers’ participation of the current trade union in Foxconn is almost absent. Workers reflect that they joined the union “automatically” when they were hired by Foxconn. They have extremely little idea about the operation of the trade union. For example, more than 95% of the workers do not know if they have paid the membership fee of the union. Besides, there are only few channels for them to reach the union. One of them is the labour caring hotline “78585”, which is a complaint and counselling channel set up by Foxconn for workers. However, there are reports about the complainants often got revenge from their seniors and complaints are never solved. "From the above findings, the genuine trade union with democratic participation never exists", SACOM continues.