fair trade electronics and the foxconn suicides (2 Viewers)

[ann post]

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Foxconn, a Chinese company that assembles Apple products, has forced employees to sign a pledge promising that they won't commit suicide, according to the Daily Mail.
The company has been criticized for providing an unsavory working environment, with a string of worker suicides putting the spotlight on bad conditions and low pay at the plant, where some 420,000 employees work. In the last 16 months, at least 14 Foxconn workers in plants in the Chinese cities of Shenzen and Chengdu have killed themselves. It's believed that many more have survived suicide attempts or been stopped before they acted. Foxconn has even taken such steps as installing nets outside factory dormitories to deter potential jumpers.
In the strange agreement, employees vow not to commit suicide, and if they do, they pledge that their families will only seek the minimum legal damages. The agreement was uncovered by a study by the Centre for Research on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom).
The study also found that workers were forced to log overtime far beyond the legal limit of 36 hours per month. Additionally, when the company was scrambling to meet high demand for the iPad, workers were only allowed one day off in 13. Workers not meeting performance standards were also publicly castigated in front of other employees. Workers are also banned from talking and sitting down during 12-hour shifts. Some are only allowed to see their families once a year, the study said.
"It is not something we endorse or encourage. However, I would not exclude that this might happen given the diverse and large population of our workforce. But we are working to change it," Foxconn spokesperson Louis Woo told the Daily Mail.
Woo also said that employees were "encouraged not to engage in conversations that may distract them from the attention needed to ensure accuracy and their own safety."
Recently Foxconn charged three employees with leaking a case design for the iPad 2

 

[HMD]

where did you get this article?

 

[ann post]

here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384763,00.asp

scarleh.

 

[ann post]

Big splosion at the factory..

Following the tragic explosion at Foxconn's Chengdu plant on Friday, the company has now confirmed to All Things Digital the death of a third employee, with nine remaining in hospital. While investigation is still ongoing, initial findings are pointing at "an explosion of combustible dust in a duct" at one of the polishing workshops, which supports earlier rumors of dust explosion; though there's no confirmation on what caused the ignition just yet.

In related news: two weeks before the fatal accident, watchdog group SACOM released a report on the welfare of workers at the new Chengdu plant. Amongst the uncovering of management issues, excessive working hours, and hazardous environment, PC World highlights complaints from workers about the large amount of aluminum dust -- which is highly explosive -- floating around the polishing department, thus suggesting a lack of proper dust extraction methods within the facility. Foxconn has previously slammed this report, but the outcome of this explosion's investigation should once and for all prove who's telling the truth. For now, though, the priority is to make sure the victims and their families are taken care of.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/foxconn-confirms-third-death-from-explosion-earlier-watchdog-re/

 

[ann post]

500,000 employees:The number of workers at Foxconn's Shenzhen facilities alone. "Foxconn city" covers 1.16 square miles, has more than a dozen factories, its own downtown, swimming pool, fire department, and hospital. With most workers housed in crowded dormitories, this enclosed industrial city is:
• more populous than the cities of Atlanta or Miami;
• by far the "city" with the highest population density in the world, more than five times as dense as Mumbai.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20067246-1/just-how-big-is-foxconn/#ixzz1OWVJ5ETx

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[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Not strictly related but between these and countless more it makes you wonder how long till china's communist capitalism can last before some major upheaval

http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/protesters-burn-police-cars-in-china-508773.html

 

[ann post]

latest developments in the world of foxconn:

• assembly contract for ipad 3 pretty much acquired (LG are involved too).
• replacing a large section of the workforce with robots, which they hope to have in place by 2013
• investing in solar power.

so basically the ipad3 will be built by solar power robots and anyone who works in electronics assembly is probably fucked.

 

[ann post]

I think the suicides are a bit of a red herring.
You are dealing with a facility with hundreds of thousands of employees
Of course there are going to be quite a few suicides each year.

http://scatter.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/a-hero-of-our-time/

i was reading this the other day, and mailed the author reiterating your point in regard to paragraph two. he got back to me saying this yesterday.

you're right: the numbers are within the range of the population as a whole.

but the factory workers aren't representative of the population as a whole. they are employed (suicide attempts in china increase with unemployment). they also live in a "city" (whereas the suicide rater is three times higher in rural areas than urban ones), and i have heard -- but this i cannot say for certain as i haven't found any confirmation -- that the gender imbalance in these factories favors men (women in china are more likely to commit suicide than men, which is somewhat unique).

which i though was interesting, in regard to the male/female thing.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Its a start

 

[ann post]

'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory
Around 150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions.

The workers were eventually coaxed down after two days on top of their three-floor plant in Wuhan by Foxconn managers and local ChineseCommunist party officials.

Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths.

In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn installed safety nets in some of its factories and hired counsellors to help its workers.

The latest protest began on January 2 after managers decided to move around 600 workers to a new production line, making computer cases for Acer, a Taiwanese computer company.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...st-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html