Foxconn has denied a report that the company will bring Chinese workers to its factory in Wisconsin, according to The Verge. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Foxconn was having trouble finding engineers and other workers in the area of the new $10 billion facility in Racine, Wisconsin, and was therefore considering bringing in Chinese engineers through internal transfers.
Foxconn, however, has denied the reports.
“We can categorically state that the assertion that we are recruiting Chinese personnel to staff our Wisconsin project is untrue. Our recruitment priority remains Wisconsin first and we continue to focus on hiring and training workers from throughout Wisconsin. We will supplement that recruitment from other U.S. locations as required,” a Foxconn representative said in a statement to Gizmodo.
The Wall Street Journal noted that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is remarkably low, at only 3 percent.
A report from the local Journal Times says that the factory is hiring about 13,000 people, 10 percent to work on the assembly lines and 90 percent “knowledge workers.” Those assembly workers will handle a fleet of manufacturing robots.
President Donald Trump praised the factory and visited the facility in June, calling the project “an incredible investment” and saying that his presidency enabled the $10 billion deal.
Opponents of the move point to the cost of Foxconn’s subsidies to taxpayers and the factory’s plan to use 5.8 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day.
Foxconn planned to hold five hiring fairs in southern Wisconsin over October and November, looking for workers to fill a variety of jobs including software engineering, construction management, and human resources. The new plant is expected to produce glass used in smartphones and tablets. Additionally, in August, the company announced that it would invest $100 million in the University of Wisconsin-Madison for “engineering and innovation research.”
Foxconn, a Taiwanese-based electronics company, is one of Apple’s primary suppliers.
