2% of your entire workforce being on strike is not insignificant - imagine if 2% of the US population suddenly took to the streets!
This, followed by the riots at other Foxconn factories, labor action, and becoming the whipping boy of the Chinese government, local labor, and international rights groups.
No, I think this whole labor business is a big friggin' deal for Foxconn right now.
In Belgium where I live, 10% of prison wardens and 50% of the public transportation sector go on strike at least thrice every year. Here at least it's not a big deal. Sad country, I know.
I agree it's probably more significant in China, where they are not used to this kind of behaviour.
It's not "Europe", it's parts of it. France is particularly bad I hear, supposedly paralysed by unions. In the UK things are much better because unions lost a lot of their power in the 80s under Thatcher.
FWIW, France has a lower proportion of unionized workforce than the US, and a lot lower than the UK in the public sector. It's more about cultural differences than any single thing like unions.
Oh, I didn't know that. I've just heard bad things about it.
Although I might be confusing this with the government business laws in France, which are also a bit messy. There's a reason lots of French companies have exactly 49 employees.
I found it amusing that, when in college, the only people who objected to the on-campus bar's pool table usage scheme - "winner stays, loser pays" - in the whole four years I was there, were French :)
Consider that this is an assembly line. So 4k workers going on strike will prevent others in the assembly line from getting the parts they need to continue working. 4k on strike can easily trigger a large work stoppage.
