Foxconn has been in the news this year for reasons ranging from manufacturing to accidents in their factories. And looks like they are going to stay in the news for some more time to come. Foxconn has announced that it would be employing the services of automated robots pretty soon.
Foxconn is planning to employ around 1 million robots in the next three years, as reported by China’s Xinhua News. They already have employed about 10,000 robots in their workforce which is apparently going to increase by 100 times very soon.
This news is interesting because a lot of job cuts have happened in the developed countries with Foxconn switching to the cheaper manpower in China, which currently stands at 1.2 million. So the automated workforce would essentially mean that there would be some job cuts seen in China as well. Ironically this move may see heavy job cuts in China as well, leading to unemployment problems.
It is still unclear how has the news been received by labor unions in China, though protests might not be a surprise. Still it would be much better than the news of pathetic health and sanitation conditions, workers committing suicides and the explosion stories that keep popping up every now and then.