Foxconn raises base wages, reduces overtime hours (2)

"It is an assessment and survey. It cannot be called an investigation and will also be conducted at all Apple's suppliers. It started with us because we are Apple's biggest supplier," he said.

Liu said he would like to see foreign media reports on Foxconn become more balanced and deeper. He said the New York Times did contact the company, but CNN and many other news organizations had not.

"There is no way we would intentionally use child labor. If individual cases actually occurred, they must have used fake identity cards and looked much older than they are."

In response to complaints about the nature of the work, Liu said that assembly lines are part of manufacturing:"To split a product into different parts on different production lines, there must be much of that type of work, and the work is dull."

He said each production line has dozens or even more than 100 workers, and discipline is necessary to ensure efficiency, but he denied that the company has a "military management" style.

A Foxconn employee named Tang, who since 2010 has worked in a computer assembly group in a plant in Guanlan county in Shenzhen, said she read about the pay increases in a newspaper.

She wasn't told she was getting a raise, but she expects to find more money in her pay on March 10.

Her base pay is about 2,400 yuan, and with the 20 yuan she earns for each overtime hour on weekdays and 27 yuan on weekends, she earns more than 3,000 yuan.

Tang said she normally works 10-hour days - eight standard hours plus two overtime.

"When it's busy, we have one day off a week, and when it's not busy, two days. Right now, after Spring Festival, it's not busy," she said with a bit of disappointment.

Tang said her work at Foxconn is "OK" and not "horrible" as she has seen reports in newspapers about working conditions at the company.