Rumor: Foxconn Closing Chinese Manufacturing Plants?

Take this with a huge grain of rumor salt, but a Chinese publication called Oriental Daily is reporting that Foxconn may be closing down its Chinese operations in the wake of all the employee suicides. We have been following this suicide story closely for a while now. Foxconn has given its workers in its Chinese facilities as much as a 66% pay increase based on performance and even Apple has cut profits to give these workers a raise.

If this rumor turns out to be true, the workers in Foxconn's Chinese factories would find themselves unemployed. Oriental Daily pegs the number of workers in the Foxconn Chinese plants at 800,000. Foxconn also recently suspended all death benefits to the families of workers who kill themselves after one suicide letter pointed to the money from the company as a way to help his family.

The rumor also claims that Foxconn is looking to move more of its operations info India and Vietnam. An unmanned factory in Taiwan is mentioned several times. With jobs so hard to come by in China if this rumor proves to be true it could be devastating to the local economy around Foxconn factories.