Attorney Hao Online｜Why a Foxconn Female Worker Lost the Labor Arbitration

This article was first published on April 2nd and was deleted in less than 3 hours.

I am not familiar with Xiaofang, nor am I an agent.

Questioning the injustice of the case.

On January 30, 2024, Xiaofang, a general worker who had worked at Foxconn for six and a half years, was fired by the company for absenteeism due to repeated complaints to the labor union. Xiaofang subsequently posted a Weibo post complaining about her experience, but the police from the Yousong Police Station where Foxconn is located came to her door. During the labor arbitration process, although the identification showed that Foxconn forged the signature of the worker on the training record, Foxconn still won the labor arbitration.

Currently, the case of Xiaofang’s illegal dismissal has been accepted by the Longhua District People’s Court of Shenzhen and will be heard on April 7, 2025.

01 The salary should be increased, but the performance evaluation is not qualified.

Xiaofang joined “San Y Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.” on July 24, 2017, and became a general worker on the Foxconn production line. On December 26, 2023, when the third labor contract was signed, she signed an indefinite-term labor contract with the company.

At Foxconn, Xiaofang works 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. Because the work is very tiring and the life is monotonous, there are not many things that Xiaofang cares about, and the salary increase is one of the few. According to Xiaofang, Foxconn’s ordinary employees are promoted and their salaries are increased once every three years. She is now “Employee 2”, and her basic salary is “2950”. In 2024, she should be promoted to “Employee 3”. According to the principle, her salary should increase by “50-500” or so.

But this aspiration was broken by unreasonable performance appraisal. On the afternoon of January 10, 2024, Xiaofang, who was working, was verbally notified by the section chief that her performance evaluation for 2023 was “C”. This means that Xiaofang not only did not get the year-end bonus, but also did not get the normal basic salary. The most serious consequence is that she cannot be promoted for three years, and her salary increase is discriminated against.

Xiaofang was dissatisfied and immediately refused to sign the performance appraisal form. In the following week, Xiaofang and the section chief and line chief “fought wits and courage” in the workshop over the signing of the performance appraisal. Xiaofang felt that she had always been at a disadvantage. The section chief and line chief had many methods, such as canceling overtime, threatening to work night shifts, and giving her demerits. All the power in the workshop belonged to the leaders, and she, as a powerless general worker, could not cope with it.

02 Complaining to the union was recorded as absenteeism, and she was fired, but the police came to her door after she posted on Weibo.

After failing to defend her rights in the workshop, Xiaofang decided to go to the union.

From January 22, after reporting to the line chief, Xiaofang repeatedly complained to the Foxconn union to defend her rights. The union organized a coordination meeting that day and responded to the demands, but the results were basically the same as the opinions of the workshop. Xiaofang was not satisfied with the results of the mediation, so she repeatedly asked the union to solve this problem.

On January 29, the 7th day of Xiaofang’s rights defense in the union, the Foxconn union once again read out the mediation results and announced that Xiaofang was fired by the company for absenteeism.

Xiaofang was stunned. Is it absenteeism to take leave to go to the union to defend her rights during work hours?

On February 29, 2024, Xiaofang posted a Weibo post to try to tell the cause and effect of her illegal dismissal and seek help from lawyers and other professionals.

The Weibo post for help was sent out at 12:33 p.m. that day, and it quickly reached 200,000 views. At more than 8 p.m., the Yousong Police Station where Foxconn is located called Xiaofang. Xiaofang was afraid and did not answer. Later, she received a call from a colleague, saying that the police had contacted them and asked them not to post anything anymore.

Xiaofang didn’t expect that her Weibo post had alarmed the police and was extremely afraid.

Since the age of 20, Xiaofang has been working at Foxconn. By the time she was fired, she had worked for nearly 7 years. If it were not for this unexpected termination, she still wanted to work at Foxconn until retirement. So Xiaofang, who was both afraid and wronged, still wanted to get an explanation for her youth.

03 The employee’s signature was identified as fake, and Foxconn still won the lawsuit.

Xiaofang applied for labor arbitration. There are two points that still remain in her memory during the arbitration process, one is the advice of the arbitrator, and the other is Foxconn’s fake evidence!

On July 30, 2024, the arbitrator Yin Jun of the Shenzhen Longhua District Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration Committee heard the case. According to Xiaofang, during the arbitration process, Arbitrator Yin Jun was very impatient with her and her lawyer, repeatedly preventing the lawyer from speaking. At the end of the hearing, while waiting to sign the minutes, Arbitrator Yin Jun lectured her lawyer:

“Don’t act on impulse, don’t be full of a sense of justice, don’t rush forward! Why do you want to stand up for her? This kind of person is not worth it. This kind of person can’t afford this money, only the enterprise can afford this money. You have to see the reality clearly, now this society······ touch this thing less, you may not be able to survive. We have so many cases piled up here, the enterprise can fire the employees for any reason, and they can find other reasons if they don’t find this reason.”

Another thing that surprised Xiaofang was that Foxconn submitted fake evidence on the key facts of the case!

Foxconn stated that absenteeism for three days was a company regulation and had been trained to Xiaofang, and presented an “Employee Discipline Announcement Sign-in Form” with Xiaofang’s signature. However, the handwriting on the sign-in form was obviously not Xiaofang’s, and the identification results also showed that the signature was fake!

Can Foxconn openly fabricate evidence?

If the sign-in form is fake, it means that the regulation was not announced to Tang Zhenfang, and the ruling of Arbitrator Yin Jun also did not review whether the content and formulation procedures of the regulation were legal.

According to the provisions of Article 4 of the “Labor Contract Law”, if the regulations have not gone through a democratic process or have not been publicized and informed to the workers, then the regulations are illegal, and Foxconn’s dismissal of Xiaofang based on these regulations is an illegal termination!

At the same time, the regulations did not explicitly stipulate that taking leave to go to the union during work hours is absenteeism, if there is no explicit provision, how can this be considered absenteeism? Isn’t going to the union to defend rights a legal channel for rights defense?

However, in the face of the ironclad evidence of forgery, Foxconn actually won! This is really a case of a gourd monk judging a gourd case!

Xiaofang is not satisfied with the arbitration result and has filed a lawsuit. The case has been accepted by the Longhua District People’s Court of Shenzhen and will be heard on April 7, 2025.

Xiaofang hopes that Judge Liu Yuan of the Longhua District People’s Court will not look down on the workers and female workers like Arbitrator Yin Jun, and will not succumb to the power of large companies, but will uphold the spirit of protecting workers in favor of labor laws and make a fair judgment.