Ninth Suicide At iPhone Factory

shar303 writes "A ninth employee has jumped to his death at Taiwanese iPhone and iPad manufacturer Foxconn, China's state media reports. The 21-year-old worker was the eighth fatality this year. This raises questions as to whether the shiny finish of the latest gadgets available from mega corporations are tarnished by such information, and whether the mistreatment of workers deserves to be highlighted when considering such firms."

Comments

Apple.

[sopssa]

A total of 11 employees have tried to kill themselves this year - two have survived.

I wonder if Steve Jobs feels proud of himself. Every Mac, iPhone and iPad is seriously overpriced and makes great profit for Apple. If Apple wanted to they could offer their manufacturers and workers a lot better working conditions, but it looks like Apple just wants to abuse it's customers, developers and workers, so much that it ultimately leads them to kill themself.

Can you even think of a working conditions where you would rather end your life than continue working there? We are talking about people who feel the need to kill themselves because of Apple's manufacturers.

Apple will just continue asking overpriced sums for their products and turn their back when their workers kill themself. Good job Apple - not only you abuse the industry, you make people kill themself.

Re:Apple.

[commodore64_love]

Social Democracy eh?

- You work your ass off trying to earn money.
- I sit and watch TV or internet all day, and then I suck the cash out of your wallet to pay my bills (food stamps, housing, doctors' bills, welfare, other free handouts, .....)

You call that acceptable??? I call that legalized theft. Thank you very much (pockets YOUR money in my bank).

Re:Apple.

[commodore64_love]

Maybe he should have subcontracted with Commodore to make Amiga 500s (and later 1200s) instead. They sold about a million a year while his NeXT sold little.

Of course a lot of the Amigas were hand-assembled in Pennsylvania. Maybe that's why they only cost ~$500 while the next cost ~$5000. Labor's cheaper than automation?

WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never seen so much liberal-bullshit crammed into a single sentence as that last one. Congrats, you must be proud.

Another victim of the iSuck symdrome

[JaCKeL 1.0]

Another victim of the iSuck symdrome...

Is this really out of the ordinary for China?

[Anonymous Coward]

People like to blame Apple, Dell, or any other company that manufacturers gadgets in China (who doesn't nowadays?), but is this really their fault?

According to this URL:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/

China and area have almost 55 suicides for every 100,000 people. Among the highest in the world.

Foxconn employs over 300,000 people according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

And has had 9 suicides so far this year, so lets extrapolate that out to 20 in a year.

Suicide rate for China in general.......: 0.00055%
Suicide rate for Foxconn employees: 0.00006%

While this is still too high, I think we should be asking what Foxxconn is doing that results in such an *improvement* over the rest of China.

The media is getting all in a panic over 9 people committing suicide yet ignoring the big picture, which is the thousands of people committing suicide in China just in general.

Re:Is this really out of the ordinary for China?

[Billy the Mountain]

Yep, I came to the exact same conclusion (although different numbers). In 1999 the suicide rate per 100,000 was 13.9 and a web search found 800,000 employees for Foxconn, so 9 / 800,000 * 100,000 = 1.1. So if you are living in China and not employed by Foxconn then you are about 13 times more likely to commit suicide.

Reminds me of Mark

[hallux.sinister]

A guy I knew named Mark used to go on and on about how environmentally friendly Apple is, and how wonderful Apple is in every possible way. I guess maybe not so wonderful if you're one of the slaves who has to build their toys.