Suicide wave hits Taiwanese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn: 10 dead

[Watchman]

Foxconn raising wages, relocating 20 percent of
Shenzhen workers closer to home (updated)
<--- http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/foxconn-raising-wages-by-about-20-percent-as-previously-planned/
By Thomas Ricker posted May 28th 2010 6:34AM

After a string of highly localized suicides at Foxconn's manufacturing campus captured the world's attention -- again -- the company has decided to increase worker wages by about 20 percent. Foxconn says that the pay raise had been planned for some time but did not say when it would be implemented. Mind you, a 20% bump in the third quarter is not unusual as Foxconn ramps up production for the holidays. In fact, Foxconn has given raises by as much as 50% in the past according to Vincent Chen, analyst at Yuanta Securities in Taipei. At the moment, Foxconn entry-level line workers are paid 900 yuan (about $131.80) per month -- remuneration that exceeds the local minimum wage in the area. And that's before bonuses and that oh-so tempting overtime pay are factored in. It's also worth noting that Foxconn is said by a factory worker surnamed Wang, to pay 100,000 yuan (about 10 times a worker's annual base salary) to families of suicide victims -- a sum he says has tempted some to their death.

Update: CEO Terry Guo is being quoted as saying that Foxconn plans to relocate some facilities and about a fifth of its Shenzhen workforce (that's about 80,000 people based on the 400k estimates tossed around) to western parts of China so that the workers can be closer to their families. Meanwhile, Sony, Nokia, and Nintendo, all Foxconn customers, have joined Apple, Dell, and HP in expressing their public concern over the working conditions in Foxconn.

 

[Watchman]

Hon Hai To Raise China Wages After Spate Of Suicides

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry plans to raise workers’ salaries by about 20 percent at its Foxconn unit in China, as it struggles to stop a spate of worker suicides and quell rising public anger.

An employee of Foxconn, maker of Apple’s iPhone, jumped to his death late on Wednesday, bringing the total of such apparent suicides to 10 this year.

Another employee attempted to slit his wrists, but survived with medical attention, Xinhua news agency said late on Thursday.

A small worker protest formed in front of Hon Hai’s head office in Taipei on Friday morning, with protesters setting out candles and white flowers as security guards watched.

Hon Hai spokesman Edmund Ding said the increase in the cash portion of pay packages for all its workers in China had been planned for some time. He did not say when the raises would be implemented.

“It may help the suicide situation, because we workers just need money and the financial pressure on us is great,” said a Foxconn employee surnamed Wang, reached by telephone at the company’s factory in Longhua, an industrial town north of Shenzhen. “Every little bit helps.”

The spate of deaths has thrown a spotlight on the labor practices of Foxconn, whose clients include Dell, Hewlett Packard and Sony Ericsson.

Apple and other clients have said they are investigating working conditions at Foxconn, which has about 420,000 employees at its base in Shenzhen and has come under fire for its secretive corporate culture.

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010...-wages-after-spate-of-suicides/#ixzz0pK50JAj2


The planned pay rise could raise Hon Hai’s quarterly labor costs by about T$2.7 billion ($84 million), which would erode its operating profit by around 10-12 percent, Citi said in a report.

Other analysts disagreed with Citi’s assessment.

“I don’t think this will impact Hon Hai’s profitability,” said Vincent Chen, an analyst at Yuanta Securities in Taipei. “Salaries for production workers are usually raised at around the third quarter, which is the peak season for most contract manufacturers as they gear up for the year-end holiday season.”

Chen added that labor costs accounted for only around 2 percent of Hon Hai’s operating costs and a salary increase of about 20 percent was not unusual.

“Hon Hai has raised salaries by up to 50 percent in the past, and it’s still doing well,” he said.

Hon Hai shares were down 1.2 percent on Friday morning, trailing the broader Taiwan market’s 1 percent gain. Foxconn’s Hong Kong-listed shares were up 0.8 percent, also trailing a rally that saw the main index up 1.8 percent.

Entry-level line workers at Foxconn’s factory in Longhua earn just over 900 yuan ($131.80) per month before overtime and bonuses, said Zhu Fuquan, a production supervisor for the company.

Foxconn was rumored to be paying around 100,000 yuan to compensate families of suicide victims, said factory worker Wang, a sum he said was tempting some victims given their low base wages.

On Wednesday, workers said they had been asked to sign a letter from Foxconn, including a clause saying the company would pay no more than the legal minimum for injuries sustained outside the workplace.

Confronted with the letter, Gou apologized and said he was taking it back, calling the language inappropriate.

(By Jonathan Standing. Additional reporting by Doug Young, James Pomfret and Kelvin Soh in Hong Kong, and Roger Tung in Taipei)

Photo: Policemen stand guard outside the Hong Hai headquarters during a protest by labour unions in Tucheng, Taipei, May 28, 2010. REUTERS/Nicky Loh

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010...ages-after-spate-of-suicides/2/#ixzz0pK5wreUp

 

[Guile]

Undercover team reveals working conditions at China factory

May 30, 2010

Life at Foxconn
Undercover team reveals working conditions at China factory

<!-- by line --> By Connie Er
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar -->

Between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep at Foxconn's plant, in Longhua Town, which some have labelled the IT Forbidden City due to its water-tight security. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

<!-- story content : start --> THEY work, some on their feet throughout, up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, assembling products that most cannot afford to buy themselves: Apple iPhones, Apple iPads, Dell computers and Nokia mobile phones. They are not allowed to talk while working and could be fined for doing so. These are some of the conditions workers at Foxconn have to endure, according to an undercover team of seven Chinese who infiltrated the Longhua plant in southern China's Shenzhen boomtown two weeks ago, The Telegraph reported.

'Hundreds of people work in the workshops, but they are not allowed to talk to one another. If you talk, you get a black mark in your record and you get shouted at by your manager. You can also be fined,' investigator Zhu Guangbing, who organised the undercover operation, told London's The Telegraph. His team included netizen volunteers and four Foxconn workers. Between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep at Foxconn's plant, in Longhua Town, which some have labelled the IT Forbidden City due to its water-tight security.

'In the past three months, the factory has been losing 50,000 staff a month because workers are burning out,' Mr Zhu, a migrant worker and a workplace rights advocate, said. 'The workers are reduced to repeating exactly the same hand movement for months on end.'

Read the full story in The Sunday Times.
[email protected]



​

 

[Watchman]

Re: Undercover team reveals working conditions at China factory

Another Foxconn employee dies in China

The deaths, which are apparent suicides, have raised questions about the conditions for millions of factory workers in China.
AFP | Photo: AFP | 25-05-10
0 comment

BEIJING - An employee of Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn died Tuesday after falling from a building at the company’s plant in southern China – the 10th such death this year, state media reported.

The deaths, which are apparent suicides, have raised questions about the conditions for millions of factory workers in China, especially at Foxconn, where labour activists say long hours, low pay and high pressure are the norm.

But the group’s founder Terry Gou on Monday denied that Foxconn’s employees were being worked too hard and driven to kill themselves, saying he was not running “blood and sweat factories”.

Foxconn, known in Taiwan by the name of its parent Hon Hai Precision, is the world’s largest maker of computer components. It also makes iPhones for Apple.

China’s state Xinhua news agency said it was not immediately known whether the latest Foxconn fatality – the second in less than a week – was a man or a woman.

It was the ninth death at Foxconn’s Shenzhen facilities this year. Another company employee died at a plant in northern China in January, according to state media reports. Two more have suffered serious injuries in similar falls.

Officials at Foxconn – whose clients include Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard – did not have an immediate comment on the report.

Gou said Monday he was “confident things will become stabilised soon.”

The company employs 800,000 people worldwide, with more than 300,000 in Shenzhen, a special economic zone on the border with Hong Kong.

In July, a Foxconn worker committed suicide when the company held an inquiry into the disappearance of an iPhone prototype, for which the employee had been considered responsible.

Foxconn has hired Buddhist monks and psychological counsellors for its workers in China.