Original Source: Forbes
“On the evening of May 26 a 23-year-old worker jumped to his death at a factory in Longhua, located in southern China near Hong Kong. The apparent suicide was the tenth since late January at facilities run by Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest maker of electronics and computer parts. The company puts together the iPhone, the iPod, the iPad and the MacBook. Foxconn also manufactures PlayStation consoles for Sony , motherboards for Intel , and an assortment of products for Dell , Nokia , Nintendo and Hewlett-Packard .
Hours before the latest tragic incident, billionaire Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn parent Hon Hai Precision, toured the Longhua plant, believed to be the planet’s largest factory. “Generally, the suicide rate in a society will increase when its GDP rises,” said Gou, protected by dozens of bodyguards, as he defended working conditions from complaints aired both inside and outside China. “I’ve consulted psychologists, and they told me the suicide rate at Foxconn is much lower than the country’s average.”
Although Gou believes “every single life is valuable,” Foxconn maintains severe working conditions contributing to the tragic incidents. Workers–the company employs about 300,000 at Longhua and another 120,000 at a second plant in Shenzhen–struggle through mind-numbing 10-hour days and are forced to accept overtime, getting only one day off a week. There is a strict ban on communication on the shop floor, and labor activists complain of production lines that move too fast. Workers live 12-to-a-room in company dormitories. No wonder Gou, the third-richest person in Taiwan, said he could not promise there would be no more worker suicides in Shenzhen…”
https://www.forbes.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-apple-suicides-china-opinions-columnists-gordon-g-chang.html#5307f2f34e4b
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