The price of technology hardware bearing a stamp “Made in China” could start inching up soon as a movement among Chinese workers for better pay and working conditions begins to spread across the country.

Labor unrest in China’s grown recently in the wake of a string of suicides at the plant of electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology. Worker deaths there forced management to give raises to workers and take a close look at how the folks who assemble much of our gadgetry are living.

The picture isn’t pretty — for anyone. Workers at the Foxconn plant are reported to have been working round-the-clock, often without a break and for minimal wages. They also lived, ate, slept and married at the plant, where they made an average of $300 a month.

The high number of suicides at company facilities caught international attention, and customers of the products made by Foxconn for companies like Apple and Dell began to agitate for the workers at stockholder meetings. Foxconn started getting pressure from its customers and made some substantial changes.

Now that Foxconn’s announced plans to double workers salaries by this fall, workers in other Chinese industries are taking a page from the tech employees book and raising a stink about their working conditions. Honda’s recently been hit by worker strikes for better pay and conditions that have been met with raises and plant closures.

All this worker unrest will ultimately be paid for by the consumer, who’ll get the bill for these improvements added to the cost of every desktop, tablet and smartphone (or automobile) made by Chinese workers.

Question is: What countries workers will be willing to undercut the Chinese labor force and create the next great outsourcing locale?

Tags: China, Foxconn, outsourcing, pay, suicide, technology, workers