To date, 10 workers have committed suicide and three others were injured in unsuccessful attempts. The most recent Foxconn employee jumped to his death on May 26.
The Taiwan-based Foxconn has two factories in China—one in Shenzhen and the other in Longhua, both north of Hong Kong.
Substandard Conditions
The Foxconn factory is believed to be one of the largest in the world, employing 300,000 workers at Longhua and 120,000 in Shenzhen.
Foxconn is also the world’s largest production facility of iPhones, iPods and MacBooks, as well as PlayStation consoles for Sony, motherboards for Intel, and various products for Dell, Nintendo, and Hewlett-Packard.
However, employment at the facilities has been compared to a military regime, where 10-hour workdays are the norm and overtime is enforced.
Communication is strictly banned on the work floor and complaints have been made that the production lines move too fast. Workers live in crowded 12-to-a-room dormitories and are allowed only one day off each week.
It is not surprising that stress levels at the facilities could be high, and appropriate counseling is scarce.
One man was a 23-year-old from Gansu Province, who had worked at the factory since June 2009. According to a report by China News Service, he jumped from a dormitory at Foxconn’s Longhua factory in Shenzhen.
Another victim, a 23-year-old man who had only worked at the factory since March, attempted to slit his wrists. He was taken to hospital and is reported to be out of danger.
Other forms of suicide included one woman hanging herself in the bathroom and a man mysteriously drowning in the company swimming pool.
Ironically, the death of the latest victim came hours after Foxconn Group President Terry Guo flew to Shenzhen to handle the crisis in person on May 26.
Guo gave over 200 journalists a tour of the facility. He expressed condolences for the deaths of his co-workers, but denied that the previous suicide incidents were the result of Foxconn’s poor management.
Meanwhile, Chinese media have reported that since the Foxconn crisis leaked, all employers have been forced to sign a declaration promising not to commit suicide.
Guo denied that, stating that, “I will not allow them to send it. There’s no such thing.”
He also pointed out that work-related stress is not to blame for the suicides as nine of the suicides were committed by people who had only been with the company less than six months.
Further Questions
The suicides have stirred controversy and speculation over issues that go beyond work conditions.
In a recent article published in New Epoch Weekly, Taiwanese attorney Winifred Tung pointed out that in the case of the ninth suicide, the woman who allegedly jumped from a building had been stabbed four times, and a knife was found at the scene.
Tung questioned if this alleged suicide was actually “suicide” and if the other cases might have involved foul play.
Reports by Chinese media also revealed that Foxconn admitted to making workers do 80 hours extra of overtime per month, while the local labor laws only permits 36 hours.
However, following the claims Foxconn sued Wang You and Weng Bao of China Business News, the journalists responsible for revealing these practices, for $3.8 million and filed a successful court ruling to have the journalists’ assets frozen.
International pressure from Reporters Without Borders and inquiries from Apple Inc. itself later pushed Foxconn to reduce the demand to a symbolic 1 yuan ($US 0.12) and withdraw the request to freeze the journalists’ assets.
