When I heard that a riot broke out last night in a Foxconn factory last night in China, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was started by the students being forced to work on the iPhone 5 without pay. For now, we don’t know, but my money’s on them being the spark, and who could blame them?
Reports the New York Times:
One Foxconn employee reached by telephone Monday afternoon, however, said the disturbance had begun when workers started brawling with security guards, and it eventually had led to a huge riot involving more than 1,000 workers. Foxconn said no property had been destroyed or damaged.
Unconfirmed photographs and video circulated on social networking sites, purporting to be from the factory, showed smashed windows, riot police officers and large groups of workers milling around. The Foxconn plant, in the central Chinese city of Taiyuan, employs about 79,000 workers.
The Chinese state-run news media said 5,000 police officers had been called in to quell the riot.
Great, now I’m going to feel even MORE guilty about being a slave to Apple’s products.