Jun. 7 – After a spate of suicides at Foxconn’s manufacturing plant in Shenzhen and strikes at Honda’s auto-assembly ventures in South China brought factory working conditions in the country into an unfavorable light, conditions now seem to be getting better – for the workers that is.

Employers, meanwhile, are seeing their profit margins growing slimmer as they face pressure to similarly augment pay in order to stay competitive, while also facing sharp minimum wage increases recently across China.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese-owned IT giant responsible for making Apple, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Motorola products among others, announced today that starting Oct. 1, it would increase wages for assembly-line workers in Shenzhen by nearly 70 percent, up to RMB2,000 (US$293) per month.

“The wage increase will reduce overtime work as a personal necessity for some employees and make it a personal choice for many workers,” Foxconn said in a statement.

The Shenzhen plant, which employs some 420,000 people, has been rocked by 10 suicides since the beginning of the year and has ignited global calls for better working conditions for China’s workers while condemning the companies operating these “sweatshops.”

“We recognize our responsibility as a global leader in electronics manufacturing, and take this responsibility very seriously,” Terry Gou, founder of Foxconn, said in the company statement. “We are working diligently to ensure that our workplace standards and remuneration not only continue to meet rapidly changing needs of our employees, but that they are best-in-class.”

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has defended the working conditions at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant, saying it is “not a sweatshop.”

“You go in this place and it’s a factory, but my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice,” he said during a news conference last week.

Japan-based Honda Motors settled a labor dispute on Friday that shut down a significant portion of the automobile manufacturer’s production over the last two weeks by agreeing to a wage increase of 24 percent. That would put the starting monthly wage of a new employee at RMB1,910(US$281).

“Poor communication led to a great deal of discontent and eventually developed into a labor dispute,” Hondo Motors (China) Investment Co. Ltd. said in a statement. “Our company will reflect deeply on this and strengthen communication with employees and build mutual trust.”

These wage raises come in addition to minimum wage increases being implemented by provincial level governments across China this year ranging from 5 percent in Hunan Province to 27 percent in Ningxia Province. Analysts with Morgan Stanley put the average minimum wage increase in China this year at 17 percent based on the 11 provinces that have enacted such measures. “It is widely expected that many other provinces will soon follow suit,” they said.

This may be the beginning of the end for China’s infamous army of cheap labor.