Today, another Foxconn employee leapt to his/her death from a Shenzhen window, despite the safety nets they erected several months ago – something our own Joel Johnson saw himself on his visit there last week. [Reuters]
Foxconn, ever classy manufacturer to the stars, was considering raising prices to offset the cost of paying its overworked, suicide-prone employees a decent wage. Now we know it’s happening, despite an iPhone-boosted 30 per cent increase in sales.
Not only does Foxconn “categorically reject” last week’s shocking survey of 1736 employees who told of overtime, lack of promised pay rises and even violence, but they believe that their 937,000 employees work in a “safe and positive” environment.
It comes as no surprise that someone would want to leak the independently produced report on Foxconn’s treatment of its workers, but the contents are bloody appalling. Apparently 1736 workers were surveyed, with stories of overtime and even violence.
They’ve tried putting up safety nets, scrapping the suicide compensation and bringing in an external dorm management company, but nothing’s stopped the trickle of suicides at their factories. Now Foxconn thinks hiring more mature workers will solve their problems.
Despite installing safety nets around the building premises, a 22-year-old female worker at Foxconn’s Kunshan factory committed suicide early yesterday morning. She only joined Foxconn at the end of March, where she worked packaging plastics.
What to do when your factory’s been plagued with unwanted attention after numerous employee suicides? Why, move up north, that’s what. A notice on a government site in Hebi city, North China, suggests Foxconn’s looking for 300,000 new workers.
Foxconn is getting plenty of attention over working conditions and employee suicides at its factories, but it seems that the electronics manufacturer may have somehow managed to quietly start installing some sort of suicide safety nets along its buildings.
