Foxconn workers who make the iPhone and other hi-tech products have been in a great number of headlines over the past few years without eliciting change. But when fights between workers and management broke out and paralyzed assembly lines in Zhengzhou last year, Chinese authorities started looking for solutions to the constant disputes. According to the Financial Times: ...

Has unrest again hit Foxconn? New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch reports that yesterday at about 1 pm in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, "three to four thousand production workers" went on strike after Foxconn demanded they work holidays and "raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills." The majority of workers who par ...

In case you've forgotten, The Simpsons is set to begin its 24th season this Sunday, which is an amazing accomplishment no matter much you've complained about its last 15 seasons as being "not what it used to be." As a preview, the producers have released this short -- viewed 2.7 million times already in four days -- to satirize the good ol' American election process. ...

When is a riot just a fight with a lot of people? When is a fight with a lot of people a riot? In Chinese factories, where thousands of workers live in close proximity, it can be difficult to tell sometimes -- and there is ample risk, from a journalistic standpoint, in using the "R" word when the facts just don't support the narrative. Nonetheless, the news out of a Foxconn plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi province ...

[caption id="attachment_1590" align="alignnone" width="441" caption="Astrid Riecken / The Washington Post via Getty Images"][/caption] Picture via Mark Gimein's post at Bloomberg Businessweek in which he essentially retracts his original review: "Usually, 'art' is art and 'journalism' is journalism. When the two meet, it’s rarely on the same stage. An exception is the work of monologuist Mike Daisey." Mike ...