Hundreds of Foxconn employees threaten suicide
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/25291-hundreds-of-foxconn/Between 150 and 300 workers at Foxconns Technology Park in Wuhan, China, where parts for the Xbox 360 are reportedly manufactured, have threatened to commit mass suicide to protest working conditions, according to reports.
Want China Times reports about 300 employees at the plant threatened to jump off the top of a building within the technology park over a payment dispute with their boss.
They reportedly asked for a pay rise on 2 January, when their boss told them either to quit their jobs with compensation or keep them without getting extra pay. However, when many of the employees selected the first option, the company cancelled the deal and did not give them the money they were owed, sparking the employee protest.
The mayor of Wuhan was reportedly called to stop the employees from committing suicide and they were eventually persuaded not to do it.
__________________________
When the Republicans are trying to lower American living standards to make its workforce competitive with China, this is what they want people to do folks.
Foxconn have now attached large nets around some of its factories to stop workers committing suicide - they´ve had many in the past few years.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)And this is what the world looks like when you have no real Unions.
I bet our corporate CEOs in the US would have said, "So what, let them die."
Lars77
(3,032 posts)That´s the only reason they care.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)1monster
(11,012 posts)Do I hear the spirit "Let them eat cake?"
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)As in, earning the same as them, but with 2012 American cost of living prices. Yeah, laissez-failists, tell me how THAT'S going to work successfully. I'm all ears.
Bringing us closer together, one inch towards the bottom at a time.
Lasher
(27,638 posts)and we will.
Shadowflash
(1,536 posts)We are ALREADY the next China.
Caterpiller is threatening Canadian workers and demanding that they cut their pay in half because the workers in an American plant make nearly half as much and they are threatening to move the jobs here to the US if they don't comply.
We are already China and India. It has come full circle.
MADem
(135,425 posts)At least that's the way some would have it portrayed....
Shadowflash
(1,536 posts)But I guess not.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)The company's enjoying record profits, the top management of course got gigantic raises recently, and they want to eliminate all benefits for their employees while also cutting wages by fifty percent. It's obscene, and most people see it as obscene, but that parody of leadership we call a prime minister is backing the company because that's what the Republicans would do in that situation.
Also, that part of Ontario's pretty frothingly conservative, which would make it more likely that someone would think pulling that kind of stunt is acceptable..
They have a strong conservative government, and a fair bit of their policy is tied to us. How are they going to be immune to the crazy things happening here?
Canada will go as we go, just several years later.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Anytime I've tried to mention that it's not all sunshine and lollipops up that way, I get a talking-to.
My wife is a Canadian. Canada was our escape hatch. She is getting a bit depressed about it, actually.
MADem
(135,425 posts)No need to get depressed, though. Simplify your life, and prioritize that which is truly important--like family and friends.
RevStPatrick
(2,208 posts)...he types on a machine that may well have been assembled by Foxconn.
rfranklin
(13,200 posts)Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour.
(This article was taken down by The Nation due to an embargo, but it was excerpted at Columbia Journalism Review.)
It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable:
This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haitis president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).
Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-03/news/30003110_1_minimum-wage-haitians-garment-workers#ixzz1j9gVe3WK
Foxconn 'suicide factory' raises pay 70pc
Following the latest rise, which will take full effect from October 1, the basic salary for production-line workers at Foxconns will have risen from 900 renminbi (£91.30 = $140) per month two weeks ago to 2,000 renminbi (£203 = $355).
This wage increase has been instituted to safeguard the dignity of workers, accelerate economic transformation and to rally and sustain the best of our workforce, Foxconns founder and Chairman Terry Gou said in a statement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7807903/Foxconn-suicide-factory-raises-pay-70pc.html
dickthegrouch
(3,184 posts)If you compared numbers inside the US you'd find vast inequities too.
Some countries' cost structure is just not the same as the US. I agree most people in Haiti are poor by any definition, but they can live on a lot less than people in the US can. I am NOT saying they should stay poor. I am saying that it is far more meaningful to compare the length of time it takes to earn a decent meal or a pair of shoes than merely spouting $3/day vs $58/day.
rfranklin
(13,200 posts)I lived there and saw it firsthand.
As of March 28, 2011--
According to an article released to day, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in Haiti is now $4.65 US
Diesel is $3.77 US per gallon, and Kerosene is not $3.74 per gallon
As of May 1, 2011--
Soaring food prices aren't new in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and heavily dependent on imports. Now those prices are rising again, mirroring global trends, while the cost of gasoline has doubled to $5 a gallon. Haitians are paying more for basic staples than much of Latin America and the Caribbean, an Associated Press survey finds.
More than half of Haiti's 10 million people get by on less than $2 a day and hundreds of thousands are dependent on handouts. Undernourished children are easy to spot by the orange tinge in their hair. "Haitians have less room to increase their expenditures on their food," said Myrta Kaulard, Haiti's country director for the U.N. World Food Program. "This is a serious concern."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-05-01-haiti-food-prices_n.htm
Suji to Seoul
(2,035 posts)900 RMB a month is absolutely deplorable.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)This is why Romney is running for President.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)want for you!
BeHereNow
(17,162 posts)The "oh so special" duh'murikkkans could never imagine
that they are part of a GLOBAL workforce and economy, therefore disposable.
Wake up? Not likely in our lifetimes.
BHN
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)someone the other day the same, nothing much is going to happen in my lifetime, probably, to make things really better ... because too many are asleep at the wheel, and if you try to tell them otherwise, they just stick their heads deeper into the sand.
maggiesfarmer
(297 posts)"The team recommended ... attaching large nets to the factory to prevent impulsive suicides."
from a linked article here: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/digital-life/item/20424-apple-discovers-91-child-la/
Foxconn is another name for Hon Hai, the biggest manufacturer of consumer electronics in world history. over 900k employees and > $50B in annual sales
Mnpaul
(3,655 posts)I believe that is the Foxconn factory that builds the stuff for Apple. HP buys their crap as well.
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)They have MANY more customers than just Apple and HP. They're the powerhouse for any high-tech company who produce electronics in large numbers, from chips to fully assembled smartphones.
I work in high tech and I once heard a manger say "We can't afford NOT to go with these guys (Foxconn)". They do everything from manufacture silicon chips to assembly to full testing.... with package deals that make cost accountants happy. Did I say happy? No, they have orgasms over the price compared to anywhere else in the world.
This is the future of high tech - marvelous gadgets at the price of millions suffering slave wages and working conditions.
dkf
(37,305 posts)What is wrong with these people that you can have a mass suicide threat? Damn.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Perhaps they think they'll all come back as butterflies....
Or some other religious nonsense.
(the US is ripe for this kind of stupidity)
Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)they are put on a list as "troublemakers" and are fired and kept from being employed elsewhere. It is a horrible existence. It doesn't really have anything to do with religion.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)in many cases their families rely on these wages to survive. yes it is crazy but it happens here in the usa too.
think
(11,641 posts)Last edited Wed Jan 11, 2012, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)
It is similar to early conditions in industries like mining here in America before we started unions and protecting labor in America.
As for the Foxconn, (fitting name) the suicides have been ongoing for a long time now:
[div class="excerpts"]
IPhone Workers Say `Meaningless' Life Sparks Suicides
By Bloomberg News - Jun 2, 2010 6:58 PM CT
....Life is meaningless, said Ah Wei, his fingernails stained black with the dust from the hundreds of mobile phones he has burnished over the course of a 12-hour overnight shift. Everyday, I repeat the same thing I did yesterday. We get yelled at all the time. Its very tough around here.
Conversation on the production line is forbidden, bathroom breaks are kept to 10 minutes every two hours and constant noise from the factory washes past his ear plugs, damaging his hearing, Ah Wei said. The company has rejected three requests for a transfer and his monthly salary of 900 yuan ($132) is too meager to send home to his family, said the 21-year-old, who asked that his real name not be used because he is afraid of his managers.
At least 10 employees at Taipei-based Foxconn have taken their lives this year, half of them in May, according to the company, also known as Hon Hai Group. The deaths have forced billionaire founder Gou to open his factories to outside scrutiny and apologize for not being able to stop the suicides. Gou built his company into the worlds largest contract electronics manufacturer and now clients from Apple Inc. to Hewlett-Packard Co. are probing the companys working conditions.....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-02/foxconn-workers-in-china-say-meaningless-life-monotony-spark-suicides.html
[div]
Suji to Seoul
(2,035 posts)The average salary in China is 2900 a month! With the concept of filial piety, this guy probably makes enough to starve to death.
think
(11,641 posts)think
(11,641 posts)The threat of mass suicide actually shows the level of their discontent in a shocking way that may bring some resolve to their complaints in a faster way than traditional means.
That is unless the company is willing to have a mass suicide of their workers wake up the people of the world to these deplorable working conditions.
Lars77
(3,032 posts)Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)Actually, worse than that. They are essentially locked up for most of their lives and then threatened with loss of livelihood after working with toxic chemicals that damage them or fired.
It is a totalitarian society.
"...thirty-four-hour shifts, beatings, child labor, an epidemic of suicides and a general prison-camp atmosphere prevailed, and even yawning could get your (meager) pay docked. He met one worker whose hand had been 'permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads.'
ChadwickHenryWard
(862 posts)Workers drop things off the assembly line just so they can bend their knees once every ten hours. I know it can be difficult for someone living under modern labor protection laws to understand, but the condition in that factory are brutal, abusive, and downright tyrannical. Some people feel that certain things are worth dying for.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)These guys can't shop around for jobs any more than you can. Most are from small villages, uneducated and probably sending money home to their families.
These are the poorest of the poor in China. The ones that never got to go to high school or college. Otherwise, they wouldn't be working on the factory floor.
duhneece
(4,118 posts)The powerful are predators, which is why we must organize to protect the weak.
The Wizard
(12,547 posts)predatory capitalism that has no regulation. Any system left unfettered becomes totalitarian. Slavery is immoral, in spite of what the Bible says.
Javaman
(62,534 posts)Foxconn and the whole city in china that builds our crap.
We should be embarassed.
think
(11,641 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)for that link...mucho gracias.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Listening now.
Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)and listen to Steve Daisey. I knew Foxxconn was bad, but it is worse than even I was aware.
http://www.thenation.com/article/164499/agony-and-ecstasy-and-disgrace-steve-jobs
"It fell to the monologist Mike Daisey, who created and stars in the brilliant one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, now at the Public Theater in New York City, to force this issue into public consciousness. Daisey traveled to the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China, which employs 420,000 people to manufacture products for Apple and other electronics and computer companies, to talk with the workers (unlike the Wired magazine reporter who, Daisey scathingly notes, penned a 3,300-word cover story on the plant without speaking to a single worker). Daiseys mission was riskya photographer was recently beaten up by the companys guardsbut he was determined, having heard about abuses at Foxconn. There, thirty-four-hour shifts, beatings, child labor, an epidemic of suicides and a general prison-camp atmosphere prevailed, and even yawning could get your (meager) pay docked. He met one worker whose hand had been permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. When Daisey showed the man his iPad, it was the first time he had ever seen one turned on. He thought it was magic.
Faced with a public relations problem relating to the suicides, the company installed wire mesh on the factory windows to stop workers from jumping out to kill themselves. According to a subsequent London Daily Mail exposé, the workers have also been forced to sign a legally binding document promising that they and their dependents will not sue the company as the result of any unexpected death or injury, including suicide or self torture.
Daisey is right when he insists that Steve Jobs was the one man in the world uniquely positioned to change this. Apples profit margins are immense. The stock could have continued to soar even if the pay and conditions of these workers lives were built into the cost of an iPhone or an iPad. People would have kept buying the products, and other companies would have been forced to follow suit. But Jobs didnt care. He even instructed Obama that the United States had to behave more like China in the manner in which it encouraged corporations to act free of regulations or concern for their employees and their environment."
Tsiyu
(18,186 posts)when he described the dormitories, 12'x12' holding 14-16 beds no American could slide into, with cameras in the halls, cameras in the bedrooms, when he desribed the workers who lost the use of their hands at 25 from doing the same tasks over and over ( which could be easily remedied by letting workers crosstrain ) and much, much more, I decided Apple Inc. sucks balls big time.
Apple, of course, declined to comment.
Everyone should listen to this broadcast. And understand that our "cheap goods" carry a steep price. We are all slave owners if we buy nearly anything made in China.
Daphne08
(3,058 posts)Devastating...
paparush
(7,964 posts)To the direct MP3 download of the show:
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/454.mp3
FailureToCommunicate
(14,022 posts)EVERYONE or anyone who likes their stuff low-priced should listen to this report of WHY that stuff is inexpensive.
joanbarnes
(1,723 posts)Festivito
(13,452 posts)or, does the entire company have to commit suicide before we admit to having a capitalism-Kool-Aid-drinking problem.
Or, should we wait for the entire country to commit suicide, or, the entire world.
would we stop it even then?
Suji to Seoul
(2,035 posts)And "maintaining connections" with "incense in the pot" helps enable it.
It's amazing what 30,000RMB (4750 USD) will get you in influence here.
Fokker Trip
(249 posts)Foxconn is planning to create the largest workforce of robots ever seen on the planet. A million plus robots.
That'll solve at least some of their PR problem and displace a lot of workers in the process. A win-win for Foxconn.
If this is the future(and I'me pretty sure it will be) we'll probably need a planetary guaranteed minimum income.
Robotics
How Foxconns Million-Machine Robot Kingdom Will Change the Face of Manufacturing
http://techland.time.com/2011/11/09/how-foxconns-million-machine-robot-kingdom-will-change-the-face-of-manufacturing/#ixzz1jAN2vFGz
boppers
(16,588 posts)These aren't jobs or careers, these are mindless, soulless, tasks.
humblebum
(5,881 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Just because your investments hasten and encourage this type of behavior is no reason to let it dampen your love of money.
meegbear
(25,438 posts)Corruption Winz
(616 posts)Such a sad situation. I have a strong feeling they weren't asking for the world, either.
At least they installed the nets though. Nets/installation that probably cost close to what the workers were likely asking for. Good job.
Fucks.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)Who would buy massive amounts of products from a country with at least 200 million slave laborers? Probably a country with torture camps and a for-profit health care system and a criminal banking system.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)sofa king
(10,857 posts)Computer hardware reviewers are a dependably picky bunch, often refusing to even acknowledge mediocre, under-performing, and/or buggy hardware.
Foxconn hasn't made a motherboard worthy of review by Anandtech in three years.
Perhaps ominously, the last Foxconn board Anandtech reviewed was the defective Foxconn Blood Rage.
ChromeFoundry
(3,270 posts)Oh, never mind, just wishful thinking that he could understand the employee's pain caused by his creation, perpetuated by US Corporations, allowed by the American Consumers.
SnakeEyes
(1,407 posts)need the power to organize into unions. They need to ban foreign companies from bringing their predatory capitalism into their country. Then create a living wage. That would stop the suicides, poverty, and hunger.
Chinese people are screwed. They have moved from communism and continuing further into the capitalist trap.