Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s top electronics assembler, yesterday said it was in talks with customers to hike prices and was aggressively improving labor efficiency in an attempt to offset the rise in wages for its Chinese workers by the first half of next year.
Earlier this year, Hon Hai said it planned to double wages to about 2,000 yuan (US$295) per month for workers at Chinese plants, beginning Oct. 1.
That is seen as one of the company’s countermeasures to improve worker benefits and the working environment after a series of worker deaths at its Shenzhen complex earlier this year.
“We believe we will be able to manage cost increases stemming from higher labor wages in the long term,” chief financial officer Huang Chiu-lien (黃秋蓮) told a media briefing at Hon Hai’s headquarters in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County.
Hon Hai hoped to take one quarter or two to offset the rise in labor costs by improving its technologies, increasing machine use and boosting workers’ efficiency, Huang said.
“Hiring Chinese workers at higher salaries is the trend — it’s no longer possible to just pay several hundred bucks,” Huang said. “Every company [running operations in China] has to face [this reality].”
Separately, Huang said Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) was concerned about an incident on Tuesday at the group’s LCD-affiliate Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子) in southern China.
Huang said Chimei chief executive Tuan Hsing-Chien (段行建) was on his way back to Taiwan and would reveal more information soon.
A temporary worker was found dead on Tuesday after falling from a six-story worker’s dormitory at Chimei’s panel-module assembly line in Foshan, Guangdong Province.
The police were investigating the cause of the 18-year-old’s death, Chimei said in a statement.
The worker, surnamed Liu, began working at Chimei on July 2 and was scheduled to end his working session on July 7 after taking sick leave on July 5.
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