The age of the robots is getting closer for the workers at Foxconn, the Taiwan-based company that has been making electronic products for a number of major Western companies like Apple, HP and others. The state run web site Xinhua reports that Foxconn plans to bring in as many as 1 million robots into its factories in the next three years. According to the article the robots will be "simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling."
The report says that currently Foxconn employs just 10,000 robots but will increase that amount to 300,000 by 2012. The move to use more robots is designed to cut labor costs. There"s no word on how many workers might lose their jobs as a result of this new robot invasion. Foxconn currently has 1.2 million employees, most of which are based in China.
Foxconn has been making a number of products including Apple"s best selling iPad product. However the company has had its share of tragedies and issues. In 2010 there were a large number of suicides of Foxconn employees that occurred on the factory grounds. The situation got so bad that Foxconn got its employees to sign anti-suicide contracts earlier this year. However in May of this year even more tragedies occurred as an explosion at one of Foxconn"s plants killed three employees and injured 15 others. Finally the huge sales success of the iPad has apparently caused Apple to hire a second company to help Foxconn in the making of future versions of the tablet device, if not replace Foxconn entirely.