BEIJING, CHINA: Electronics maker Foxconn International Holdings plans to build a huge new plant in central Henan province, which will eventually employ 300,000 people, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
On Monday, a source told Reuters that Foxconn's parent company, Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. would also build two factories in inland China to mitigate rising labour costs in southern China's factory belt.
The moves come at a time of labour unrest in China's southeastern industrial hub, where increasingly assertive migrant workers are demanding better conditions and higher wages.
Executives at Foxconn, hit by a series of worker suicides, and local government official were thrashing out details of the factory plans, Xinhua said, quoting a spokesman for the city of Zhengzhou, Henan's capital and planned site of the new plant.
Land had already been set aside for the project, which is expected to provide 100,000 jobs in the near term, rising eventually to three times that number, the report added.
"Workers can expect a monthly income from 2,500 yuan ($370) to 3,000 yuan with wages of no less than 2,000 yuan per month," Xinhua quoted an unnamed employment promotion official saying.
But newly recruited workers would intern first in Foxconn's plants in coastal Shenzhen city, subsidised by the provincial government, with each employee getting a maximum 600 yuan a month, the report added.
It did not say how long training would last, but recruitment has started across the province.
Last Friday, authorities in one Henan city posted a job recruitment notice on a government website, seeking workers for what it said would be a new Foxconn factory.
On Monday, a spokesman for parent Hon Hai denied any plans for a factory in Henan, saying it already had a small factory there and that he had not heard of any moves to expand.
Foxconn, which has a client list including Apple and Dell, has suffered a spate of worker suicides, which focused attention on labour conditions and led to the company raising wages for many of its workers.
Warns of increased H1 losses
Meanwhile, Foxconn International warned that it expected its first-half losses to increase from the same period a year ago due to weaker pricing and higher depreciation expenses.