Despite Safety Nets Foxconn Staffer Falls to Death

[savalez]

Source: Tom's Hardware

Foxconn has faced a lot of criticism this year as a result of a cluster of suicides at one of its factories. The manufacturing company is said to have installed safety nets to catch jumpers attempting to end their lives. However, it seems even the safety nets are not enough, as Foxconn yesterday confirmed another death at the factory.



Read more: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Foxconn-Suicides-Factory-China-Manufacturers,11026.html

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As you may already know, Apple iPhone and iPad users are contributing to slave labor. These Foxconn people make a whopping $295.50 per month! This has got to stop.

[OhioChick]

1. "Apple becomes richest tech company"

REUTERS, Aug 4, 2010, 02.30pm IST


SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer faces a dilemma that perhaps every finance chief wishes to have: obscene amounts of cash and nowhere to put it.

The iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac computer maker has accumulated a cash pile that totals nearly $46 billion, the biggest cash hoard among US tech companies and equivalent to one-fifth of Apple's market capitalization.

More: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Apple-becomes-richest-tech-company/articleshow/6256365.cms

Maybe it's time to pay the workers more.

[onehandle]

2. They also make products for Dell, HP, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Amazon, Motorola, Cisco, Intel...

...and many others.

In fact if you own an electronic device of Any kind, it was made by slave labor in China.

[savalez]

4. That's correct. Just did some research. Damn this sucks.

But they seem to be synonymous with Apple. So much so that Apple looked into the claims. Perhaps they are their biggest customer right now? I don't know. Here's a clip from one of Apple findings (source: wikipedia)

"Apple's inspection team judged the claims of employee mistreatment to be largely unfounded, but it also discovered that at peak production times some employees were working more hours than the limit of 60 outlined in Apple's "Code of Conduct", and that 25% of workers did not get at least one day off each week. These same workers complained that there was not enough overtime work during off-peak periods. The auditing team also discovered that junior employees were subjected to military-style drills, and workers had been punished by being made to stand at attention for extended periods."

"many workers told us that throughout their shift ... they are not allowed to speak at all, so there is absolutely no conversation at all between workers during their shift."

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How they can deduce from their own findings that claims are "largely unfounded" is beyond me.

We gotta bring manufacturing back to America.

[onehandle]

5. It doesn't make it right, but slave labor is in every phone, computer, clock radio...

And yes it sucks.

What I would like to see is us returning all manufacturing to America. To Hell with China.

[Hannah Bell]

12. and the majority of china's electronics exports are foreign brands. not chinese.

the chinese are just contractors.

so fancy-schmancy brands like apple have "plausible deniability" & slave labor super-profits. by design.


In this article, HEC’s Ari Van Assche reviews the evidence from China’s electronics
industry to see whether the rise in the sophistication of Chinese exports really
indicates that Chinese firms are upgrading technologically and becoming high-tech
competitors. He argues that this is not the case, citing three reasons.

First, the rise in the sophistication of China’s electronics exports has not been mirrored by China’s domestic electronics production becoming more sophisticated.

Second, the bulk of China’s electronics trade and production is in the hands of foreign-invested
enterprises.

Third, increased market share by Chinese and Taiwanese “champion” firms has rarely led to an increase in competition with the leading Western and Japanese electronics firms.

http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/jul06/vanassche.pdf


The "Chinese miracle" is a joint scam between the western & chinese ruling classes.

[boppers]

8. Apple's name is attached because Apple has a reputation to uphold.

Dell (for example) doesn't give a damn, they've always been proud of using the cheapest crap they can put together, but Apple has been carrying a "good guy" torch for so long that they have to be proactive about the social costs of their products.

[AdHocSolver]

20. Jobs will return to America when Americans stop buying so much overpriced foreign made crap.

So long as Americans keep on providing huge profits to corporations that are happy to use foreign slave labor nothing will change.

So long as corporations continue to eliminate jobs in the U.S., the U.S. economy will continue its downward spiral into a long lasting depression.

When Americans demand that corporations provide American-made products for sale, and stop buying overpriced foreign made crap, then, and only then, will the U.S. economy recover.

[sofa king]

24. The company appears to be on "about to go to hell" trajectory.

PC geeks like me know Foxconn as one of those companies that tried to make enthusiast motherboards for awhile, then tried to scam enthusiasts with their reputation and a lot of promises they hoped nobody would bother to test.

Wanna guess what their top-o-the-line Intel X58 motherboard is? That's right, the Foxconn Blood Rage!

The surest sign of a motherboard maker on its way down the tubes is when HardOCP (the reviewers in the link above) stop reviewing a manufacturer's products. Their last review was almost exactly one year (early June, 2009) before they started covering the Foxconn suicide epidemic (late May, 2010).

[MercutioATC]

3. You know you have problems when...

...you have to install big nets to stop employees from jumping to their deaths.

[tomm2thumbs]

6. BINGO! Talk about dancing around the problem entirely

[boppers]

9. Nets are cheaper than pay raises.

Sad but true.

[unblock]

17. yeah, because, the safety nets are an extra expense.

:sarcasm:

[prolesunited]

7. Maybe they should just start chaining them

to their work stations.

[Desertrose]

10. How do we know they don't already? nt

[prolesunited]

11. Because they are able to make it to the windows

to jump.

That picture in the OP is quite disturbing.

[Odin2005]

13. Where are all the Apple fanboys out to defend their favorite evil corporation now?

ALL multinational corporations are evil scum.

[howaboutme]

14. Something to think about

Every American (left and right) had better quickly come to the realization that our way of life is at risk, and it has nothing to do with conservatism or liberalism, but instead about the politics of divisiveness that has permitted our country to be pillaged and robbed blind, by and to the benefit of a select relatively few capitalist corporatist elite. We're the sheeple that are manipulated.

They've used the divisive issues to divide and conquer and with the DNC they have their hooks in both Parties. The MSM media is fully compliant, committed and in partnership with this agenda.

It is obvious that the agenda began in earnest when Jimmy Carter's second term was stolen (October Surprise) and Reagan was elected.

[daleo]

15. That's amazing

I assumed it was an Onion article at first.

It's like something out of Dickens.

[alfredo]

16. 9 suicides out of 450,000 workers is not out of the ordinary

The suicide rate in China is 13.9% per 100,000 people. The US rate was 11.1 in 2005.

18 American Veterans commit suicide each day according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Foxconn.



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/05/26/businessinsider-apple-and-dell-investigating-the-foxconn-working-conditions-2010-5.DTL

But while it's obviously a tragedy that any one person, let alone 9, ever commits suicide, let's be clear about one thing: the suicide rate at Foxconn is not particularly high.

In fact, at 5.4 suicides per 100,000 people (400,000 people work at Foxconn), the Foxconn suicide rate is lower than it is in all 50 US states.

In Wyoming, where the population is 512,757, and there are no sweatshops, 22.6 people per 100,000 commit suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

In California, the rate is 9.2 – New York, 6.9.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/05/26/businessinsider-apple-and-dell-investigating-the-foxconn-working-conditions-2010-5.DTL#ixzz0vxjnQN5n

[savalez]

18. OK, but did they commit suicide at work?

The fact that all of them killed themselves at work, at Foxconn, makes a statement that you appear to be overlooking in your analysis.

[Theobald]

23. Except the majority of them did not commit suicide at work

The majority of them committed suicide in worker provided housing after work. Foxconn is a massive city with housing and work all in the same area. Most of the suicides were committed from the workers places of residence which just happen to be provided by the employer. Foxconn workers actually have a lower rate of suicide then their Chinese peers who don't work for Foxconn.

[AdHocSolver]

19. No one should be made to work so hard for so little pay. Your comments are meaningless. nt

[dgauss]

21. How many of those 400,000 employees committed suicide while not at work?

The article doesn't say. Yet it compares total suicide rates per 100,000 people in other demographic groups - suicides occurring anywhere - with suicide rates of Foxconn employees while at work. Whether intended or not, it's statistical sleight of hand.

[alfredo]

22. There's also a cultural aspect that we need to know.

In the US, the gun is the most popular form of suicide. In San Francisco jumping from the bridge is quite the thing. In Japan they have student suicides due to the pressure and bullying.

In the US jumping from buildings or bridges is not too common, but in Hong Kong it is common.

In Germany suicide by trains is common.


In the pacific islands, poisoning is responsible for the most suicides. Farming communities see the use of Pesticides for suicide.

Access to the device for suicide could be a factor. There my not be many tall buildings on a small Pacific island, and guns are few, but there is pesticides available to anyone who can purchase or steal them.

[Theobald]

25. As the article states

the women died falling from her dormitory buidling. Foxconn provides housing for it's workers and most of the suicides were not at work, but afterwards in employer provided housing. There is no statistical sleight of hand, the rate is for overall suicides of Foxconn employees, not just when they are at work.

[dgauss]

27. The article doesn't say anything about a woman or women or dorms.

Where are you getting your information? I dug through some of the links, though, and found a statement about some people jumping from their dorm rooms, but not how many of the suicides were from "dorms."

http://micgadget.com/3781/foxconn-offers-destress-room-to-halt-the-suicide-cluster/

Do all 400,000 employees live in dorms?

Also, there are 400,000 employees in Chinese Foxconn "factories" but 9 suicides in one single factory. "Within half a year, there were 9 suicide attempts, with 7 confirmed deaths in Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen, China."

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-shocking-conditions-inside-chinas-brutal-foxconn-factory-2010-5

How many people work at that factory? What is the suicide rate there, from the factory itself or from factory dorms? Maybe that's the compound where the nets are. The information doesn't seem to be there but maybe you have more.

The statistics seem loose, lacking and convenient - definitely in the article that was referenced and in the article I responded to. The article used faulty reasoning. If you actually have a more complete picture I'd be interested. So far I've seen nothing, statistically or even just using common sense, that justifies dismissing the fact of suicide nets - something not very common in Wyoming, I believe.

[LanternWaste]

26. I believe one should also look at the different causes...

I believe one should also look at the different causes of suicide for better a context. Additionally, are the individuals committing suicide in WY in an atmosphere which contributes to it or attempts to alleviate the problem.

Can the same be said for the Foxconn atmpshere...?