Foxconn chief insists he can stop the wave of tragedy doing serious damage to his company
FOXCONN IS the world’s largest manufacturer of electronic equipment, including the iPhone and the iPad, and getting round its lengthy perimeter in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen can take a long time.
Yesterday, a 19-year-old employee plunged to his death at this enormous Chinese plant, the 10th to die of apparent suicide at the factory in recent months. There were also another two attempted suicides.
All of the suicides were by youngsters aged between 18 and 25, and the incidents have prompted a bout of soul-searching in China about the social cost of breakneck economic development.
This Foxconn facility is impossibly huge. Chefs slaughter 6,000 pigs a day to feed the workforce of between 300,000 and 400,000 in this giant industrial complex, spread over 3 sq km, with young employees toiling to make household-name electronic products.
Chances are the mobile phone you are carrying or the laptop you are using has some input from the Taiwanese-owned firm. Dell and Hewlett-Packard use Foxconn components.
The Foxconn plant is one of the cauldrons where China’s economic growth story has been concocted. But the plant has a major problem. The spate of deaths has raised questions about working conditions for millions of factory workers in China, especially at Foxconn, where labour activists say long hours, low pay and high pressure make for an unbearable working environment.
The Chinese media says the suicides are being driven by the feeling among workers that they live their lives like machines. They start work at 4am, then go through the motions like an appliance thousands of times over during their long shift.
Last July, a Foxconn worker killed himself when the company held an inquiry into the disappearance of an iPhone prototype, for which the employee had been considered responsible.
Terry Gou, the founder of Foxconn’s parent company, Hon Hai Precision, said he was confident he could stop the wave of tragedy that is doing serious damage to his company’s name. He insists his factories are no sweatshops, and says he is confident the situation would be resolved soon.
Foxconn employs over 800,000 workers in all.
On Monday, Gou said he was “confident things will become stabilised soon”. The company is taking some unusual steps to try to ease the minds of its workers. This includes playing soothing music along production lines. Over 2,000 singers, dancers and gym trainers have been recruited to help toilers on the conveyor belts to relax, and the group is hiring psychiatrists to help with stress management.
Groups of Buddhist monks have been invited onsite in the bid to halt the wave of suicide attempts.
However, the company has also introduced tougher measures to stop workers from trying to end it all. New fences are being installed on every workers’ dormitory building, according to local media, which are up to three metres high and are meant to prevent suicidal workers from jumping off the roof.
Local media are reporting that the workers find the fences even more depressing – that they have made everyone feel like they are living in a prison, and that anyone really feeling suicidal would find other ways to end their lives.
“Young workers born during the 1980s or 1990s are becoming the mainstream of our workforce. In this context, the Foxconn employee ‘jumping’ incident should arouse the vigilance of the whole society. Companies, government and society should pay more attention to the spiritual crisis of young lives,” said the Xinhua news agency in an editorial.
Zhang Ming, a political science professor at the People’s University of China, said workers were not machines or spare parts.
“To many post-’80s or post-’90s migrant workers, it is unbearable for them to live in a place without cultural entertainment and communications with their friends. Many of them are the only children in their families. They are psychologically weak.
“Although living in the city, they cannot be one part of city. The Foxconn ‘jumping’ incident is a call for life,” said Mr Zhang.
Workers have told of difficult working conditions. One told the Southern Weekend newspaper that he would deliberately drop something on the ground so that he could have a few seconds of rest when picking it up.
Nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong academics have issued an open statement calling on Foxconn and the government to do justice for young migrant workers.
“China’s development strategy throughout these 30 years not only accomplished an economic miracle. It deepened regional inequalities, prolonged stagnation of wages, and deprived migrant workers [of their] citizenship and human rights,” it said.
The tales are grim. Ma Xiangqian (19), from Henan, jumped on January 23rd. Foxconn was forced to refute local media reports that Ma had been assigned to cleaning toilets after he damaged equipment due to inexperience.
His sister Ma Liquan told China’s state TV CCTV: “After deducting mandatory social securities, we earn only some 800 yuan (€95.40) a month. No one seems to force us . . . and yet we’ve no choice but to do overtime work.” A work shift typically lasts from 10 to 12 hours, and overseers enforce military-style discipline.
One online commentator, called “Taichen”, said China was undergoing a social transformation. “We have always focused on GDP, corporate benefits, corporate profits, while fundamentally ignoring those creators of our social wealth, those who [are] living in the lower level of our society. When they are calling for their normal interests in different ways, the elite class never consider that silent lambs will moan.
“Now we have to say, not ask what your people can do for you, but to ask what the country can do for your people.”