iPhone contractor shuts plant after riot

Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, which assembles Apple’s iPhones and makes components for top global electronics companies, closed a plant in China after about 2,000 workers were involved in a riot at a company dormitory.

It was not clear how long the shutdown would last at the plant, which employs about 79,000 people in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, while police and company officials investigate the cause of the disturbance.

Foxconn said the trouble started with a personal row that blew up into a brawl. But some people posting messages on a Twitter-like site said factory guards had beaten workers and that sparked the melee.

“The plant is closed today for investigation,” Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo said. An employee contacted by telephone said the closure could last two or three days.

Pictures from just outside the plant showed broken windows at a building by an entrance gate and a line of paramilitary police trucks parked inside the factory grounds.

The unrest is the latest in a string of incidents at plants run by Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co and the world’s largest contract maker of electronic goods.

In 2010, at least 13 Foxconn employees in China died in apparent suicides, which activists blamed on tough working conditions.

The company has been spending heavily in recent months to improve working conditions and raise wages.

Foxconn said the latest incident escalated from what it called a personal dispute between several employees at around 11pm on Sunday in a privately managed dormitory, and was brought under control by police at around 3am.

“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,” Foxconn said. Hon Hai said about 2,000 workers were involved.

Comments posted online, however, suggested security guards may have been to blame.

The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted a senior official with the Taiyuan city government as saying investigators initially determined the fight broke out as workers from Shandong Province clashed with workers from Henan.

The agency reported earlier that about 5,000 police were sent to end the violence.

Foxconn cited police as saying 40 people were taken to hospital and a number were arrested, while Xinhua added that three people were in serious condition.

An employee confirmed the Taiyuan plant is among those that assemble and make parts for Apple’s iPhone 5.

In June, about 100 workers went on a rampage at a Foxconn plant in Chengdu, in southwestern China.