Christmas plans: Amazon to hire 50,000 extra workers for the holiday season

Online retail giant Amazon is set to take on 50,000 temporary workers this holiday season to cope with increased demand.

Amazon is already making plans for the holiday season, announcing its intention to hire 50,000 seasonal workers for its 40 fulfillment centers across the US.

With a year-round full-time staff count of 20,000 at its centers, the large number of extra workers indicate Amazon’s expectation of a bumper Christmas. Alongside orders for its large number of usual items, the e-commerce giant will also be looking forward to a flurry of requests for its new range of Kindle Fire HD tablets, as well as its e-readers, which include the new Paperwhite device.

Referring to the company’s hiring plans in a statement, Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president of global customer fulfillment, said, “We’re hiring at our sites across the US for talented individuals to help us deliver a great experience for our customers this holiday season.”

Clark said the temporary workers play a “critical role” helping with increased customer demand, adding that thousands end up staying on in full-time positions.

The precise nature of the available work isn’t specified, though being located at the fulfillment centers where online orders are dealt with likely means physical tasks – such as taking purchased products from wharehouse shelves, packing and labeling – will form the bulk of the work.

In March, the Seattle-based company purchased warehouse automation solution firm Kiva Systems in a bid to make its centers more efficient.

On its dedicated Fulfillment website, one Amazon employee says intriguingly of her job, “Amazon’s peculiar ways is what keeps this career exciting and rejuvenating.” So if you enjoy a bit of peculiarity and are free this holiday season, you know exactly what you should do.

[Image: Amazon]

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Riot breaks out at Foxconn plant, 40 injured [video]

A riot involving thousands of workers and police has caused the temporary shutdown of a Foxconn plan in northern China.

A riot broke out late Sunday night at a Foxconn plant in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan. The impromptu protest involved more than 2,000 workers and 5,000 police, according to official Chinese government reports. The clash is said to have lasted about four hours, and around 40 people were injured. Three people were in serious condition.

A report from Chinese website TechWeb said that “at least” 10 people had died as a result of the massive brawl. However, a statement from Foxconn obtained by The Next Web said that “no employee deaths related to the incident” had occurred.

The Foxconn plant, which according to an undercover report produces back covers for Apple’s iPhone 5, among many other components for major electronics companies that include Sony, Nokia, and others, has been temporarily shut down while authorities investigate the cause of the upheaval. Foxconn has refused to officially confirm that Apple components are made at the Taiyuan factory.

Reports from Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said that the clash began after a fight broke out in a factory dormitory between two workers from different Chinese provinces.

“The cause of this dispute is under investigation by local authorities and we are working closely with them in this process, but it appears not to have been work-related,” said Foxconn in a statement.

The exact cause and other details of the protest are difficult to know, as China retains notoriously tight control of its media and social networks. As Engadget reports, information about the riot posted to Chinese social network Sina Weibo has already been deleted, presumably at the hand of the Chinese government.

Video and photos posted to Sina showed broken windows and other destruction. One highly cited video, posted to Chinese video sharing site YouKu, has been removed.

Foxconn employs about 1 million people in China. The Taiyuan alone has 79,000 workers, according to Foxconn.

Foxconn has repeatedly made headlines for poor working conditions and brutal treatment of its employees. In 2010, at least 13 people committed suicide at Foxconn plants. The company later installed “suicide nets” in employee dormitories in an attempt to prevent further deaths.

“Foxconn is known to have a very authoritarian management style and discipline is very strict,” said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, in a statement to AFP. “When you have a working environment like Foxconn where workers are treated simply as units of production, essentially robots, not human beings… then sometimes violence is the only way out [and] you see minor disputes escalating into violence.”

Similar incidents of worker outrage broke out in January and June of this year at other Foxconn plants.

Watch a video of the Taiyuan incident below:

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Apple and Foxconn Make Progress on Working Conditions at Factories

Image credit: ABC News

Are things getting better for the Chinese workers who assemble iPads and iPhones for Apple?  Back in March, the Fair Labor Association released a report on the poor conditions at Apple’s Foxconn supplier. The organization gave a long list of recommendations to Apple and Foxconn, and both Apple and Foxconn agreed to follow them.

Today, five months later, the FLA says that that Foxconn has completed 280 action items on time or ahead of schedule.

“Our verification shows that the necessary changes, including immediate health and safety measures, have been made,” Auret van Heerden, president and CEO of the Fair Labor Association, said in a statement. “We are satisfied that Apple has done its due diligence thus far to hold Foxconn accountable for complying with the action plan, including the commitment to reform its internship program.”

Apple and Foxconn made a number of physical changes in the last few months to improve worker safety, including more testing of equipment and changes to prevent repetitive stress injuries. A detailed report of the improvements is posted on the FLA site.

Foxconn also took steps to improve working hours, but it still has not reached the final goal. By July 1, 2013, Foxconn has promised to reduce worker hours to the legal limit of 49 hours per week and stabilize pay. Foxconn has already reduced the workload to under 60 hours per week.

“The next phase of improvements will be challenging for Foxconn because they involve major changes in the working environment that will inevitably cause uncertainty and anxiety among workers,” van Heerden said. Making changes to the working hours are among the 76 remaining action items that Foxconn has to accomplish before next July.

Apple was reported to have become history’s most valuable company Monday, though the numbers did not account for inflation.  It has sold approximately 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in the last three months of last year.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com