Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory in March, months before Friday's report of a massive strike at the plant's iPhone 5 production lines.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Thousands of factory workers at Foxconn went on strike Friday to protest their working conditions on the iPhone 5's production lines, according to a report from an independent workers' rights organization.
Workers at Foxconn's plant in Zhengzhou, China, were furious after management enacted "overly strict demands" for production of Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) new iPhone 5, according to a report late Friday from China Labor Watch (CLW), a New York-based advocacy group that works closely with sources in China.
The strike began at 1 p.m. local time (1 a.m. ET) on Friday, CLW said, and the majority of its participants were from the on-site quality control line for the iPhone 5. It remained ongoing into the evening, causing a work stoppage that "paralyzed the production lines," the group said.
Foxconn did not respond to emailed requests for comment that were sent after normal business hours at its Taipei, Taiwan, headquarters. Apple also did not respond to a request for comment.
The trouble began after workers were given new, impossibly strict standards, demanding precision down to increments as small as two-hundredths of a millimeter, according to CLW.
"Employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard," CLW's report said, because of "design defects" in the iPhone 5.
Foxconn's exacting demands, coupled with the fact that workers were not allowed to take vacation time during a recent week-long holiday, created a high-pressure situation. Workers and inspectors clashed in fights that sometimes turned physical, the CLW said, with some hospitalized as a result.
Foxconn's Zhenghou complex employs around 190,000 people, according to CNET, which recently visited the area. Apple CEO Tim Cook made an appearance at the plant in March.
CNNMoney spoke to U.S.-based staffers at CLW, which is a frequently cited source for Western media outlets reporting on Chinese labor issues.
Bessie Chang, a CLW program assistant, said it was the organization's Chinese-based staff that first heard rumors of the strike. CLW director Li Qiang spoke to his sources at Foxconn to verify the report.
Qiang, speaking through Chang as a translator, said the strike continued as of 11 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET) Friday. He hasn't received information since then, but he noted that Foxconn production lines typically run 24 hours a day. He did not know whether workers on every shift are participating in the strike.
Foxconn has been in the spotlight amid growing public concern about labor conditions in the overseas factories that many U.S. gadget makers rely on to produce their devices. Apple is just one of many companies that outsources its manufacturing, but as the industry's most popular and profitable company, it's under the most intense scrutiny.
A spate of suicides at Foxconn factories in 2010 garnered media coverage of allegedly harsh working conditions, including unsafe facilities and illegal amounts of overtime.
In January 2012, Apple joined the dependent labor-rights organization Fair Labor Association (FLA), which promptly began inspections of the working conditions at Foxconn's many factories.
FLA released an assessment in March that documented dozens of major labor-rights violations, including excessive overtime, unpaid wages and salaries that aren't enough to cover basic living expenses. The FLA's report said Foxconn agreed to work with the group on improvements, including enacting "full legal compliance" with Chinese work-hour laws by July 2013.
Last month, a large-scale incident involving 2,000 workers forced the temporary closure of Foxconn's Taiyuan factory. One worker at the scene termed the situation a riot, and it led to the hospitalization of about 40 people.
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