Workers at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn have reportedly gone on strike to ask for longer working hours, because automated production processes mean there is less lucrative overtime to be worked.

Reports from China suggest that Foxconn workers went on strike after HP cut orders at one of the manufacturer's plants. That's bad news for workers because many count on overtime to increase their wages.

Foxconn is known to be investing in robotic manufacturing technology to reduce costs, so overtime looks to be less likely in future.

The dispute at the Chongqing plant in the south of China was apparently resolved after a few hours of negotiation.

The facility is not used to make Apple kit, so it's not possible to file this one under “iThings are the enemy of the workers.”

That HP has reportedly reduced orders for either servers or PCs looks more worthy of attention than any Cupertino connection: with the PC market showing some signs of stabilisation, a dip for HP is not the news it wants ahead of its imminent bifurcation. ®