Sweatshop by Sol Robbins
10th Suicide Strikes Apple Plant
On the same day that Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard promised to look into working conditions at China’s Foxconn plant, a 10th worker committed suicide, PC World reports. The death of the 19-year-old male worker also came just after the company’s billionaire founder took the media on a tour of the sprawling complex in response to accusations from labor groups that workers toiled in sweatshop-like conditions.
The company has brought psychiatrists and Buddhists monks to the factory complex to support workers, and now plays soothing music along production lines, adds theIndependent. It plans to install 10-foot-tall fences to stop workers jumping from buildings and may give workers a 20% pay rise, though a Foxconn rep maintains the increase would not be a response to the suicides, but is being considered because business has been good.
Yeah, 20% of nothing…
Is nothing.
Apple surpassed Microsoft in the past few months as the “world’s most valuable tech company”.
Robber Barrons…
Indeed.
Btx3's Blog 
t-shirts101
May 27, 2010 at 9:50 AM
I heard about this story yesterday. Not to diminish the seriousness of suicide, but Foxconn was reported to have 400,000+ employees. The suicide rate of many small US cities is higher than the number employees that died.
Once again, this isn’t to diminish suicide’s seriousness or to let Foxconn off the hook. I cannot imagine what the working conditions of a Chinese factory would be like. I’m just not sure of this is unusual.
LikeLike
btx3
May 27, 2010 at 4:12 PM
Don’t know what the suicide rate is in China – but this is very high for job related suicides.
Seems there have been 13 attempted suicides since the first of the year, with another one this morning…
LikeLike
t-shirts101
May 27, 2010 at 9:53 AM
I suppose it would be more fair to understand the suicide rates of Chinese cities….
LikeLike