Worker’s Injury Sheds Light on China’s Workers’ Comp System, Apple Contractor

Apple Inc.s largest contract manufacturer has been pushing for a Chinese worker left brain-damaged in a factory accident to be removed from the hospital in a case that throws a harsh new spotlight on labor rights in China.

Zhang Tingzhen, 26, an employee of Taiwan firm Foxconn, had nearly half his brain surgically removed after surviving an electric shock at a plant in southern China a year ago. He remains in the hospital under close observation by doctors, unable to speak or walk properly.

However, Foxconn, which is paying Zhangs hospital bills, has been sending telephone text messages to his family since July, demanding they remove him from the hospital and threatening to cut off funding for his treatment a move the firm says would be justified under Chinese labor law.

Foxconn confirmed it had sent the messages, saying that under Chinese law the worker must submit himself to a disability assessment a process that in Zhangs case would require him to be discharged from the Shenzhen hospital and travel 70 km (43 miles) to Huizhou, where he was first hired by Foxconn.

The firm said in response to emailed questions that it would be prepared to return Zhang to the Shenzhen hospital after the assessment, though his father said Zhang was unfit to travel and that doctors felt he remained at risk of a brain hemorrhage.

The case has raised fresh questions over the labor record of Foxconn, one of the biggest and most high-profile private employers in China, after a series of well-publicized suicides among its army of around a million workers and recent outbursts of labor unrest.

It has angered labor activists who say Zhangs plight also highlights Chinas patchy and sometimes precarious welfare system for workers seriously injured in industrial accidents and point out that there are many workers worse off than Zhang.

They kept sending me SMSs every day to get my son out of hospital and to appear before an injury assessment body or they will stop paying all expenses, including his medical fees and our living expenses, said Zhangs father, Zhang Guangde.

You cannot imagine the suffering they put me through, how I had to fight every inch of the way just to get money so we can take care of our son, he added, speaking at his sons bedside at the Number 2 Peoples Hospital in Shenzhen.

Zhang was repairing a spotlight on an external wall at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, when he received an electric shock and fell four metres (12 feet) to the ground. He has since undergone five operations, has lost his memory, is incontinent and requires careful, regular monitoring.

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Worker’s Injury Sheds Light on China’s Workers’ Comp System, Apple Contractor