The largest private employer in China, Foxconn with over 1 million employees, is finally facing stiff labor costs. This is great news for the U.S. manufacturing sector who may be able to lure some work back to the United States.
It will be interesting to see how this affects the global market, but for now the advantage is all for the robots:
Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.
The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.
Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia.
A quote from Foxconn reveals that the issue of rising labor costs for the company are just going to get worse:
…talked about moving its human workers “higher up the value chain” and into sexy fields such as research.
via The Economist
