Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) bowed deeply several times and apologized yesterday for a spate of suicides at a factory that makes Apple iPods and iPhones, promising the electronics giant will try to stop more deaths.
But the usually media-shy executive, chairman of Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), said there was only so much his company could do.
“We’re a company, we are not a society,” Gou said. “We have a company’s abilities to do things but we don’t have a society’s abilities.”
PHOTO: AFP
Foxconn opened up its sprawling factory complex in Shenzhen to reporters yesterday, an unprecedented move from the normally super-secretive Taiwanese company still struggling to come to terms with the suicides of 10 young workers this year.
The company has been a lightning rod for labor activists who say its working conditions cause misery for its vast work force.
The tour comes after the suicide on Tuesday of Li Hai (李海), 19. He was the latest victim of the suicide surge, jumping to his death from a building at the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, which also counts among its products Dell computers and Nokia phones.
PHOTO: AFP
Police said Li killed himself after working at the plant for only 42 days, Xinhua news agency reported.
The suicide was the ninth at Foxconn’s massive plant in Shenzhen, which employs more than 300,000 people. Two other workers have tried to kill themselves by jumping from buildings in Shenzhen, but they survived. Another suicide occurred at a smaller plant in Hebei Province in January.
Gou said many of the deaths were most likely caused by a variety of factors, including failed romances, an area difficult for the company to get involved in.
However, he said Foxconn was consulting with a large group of mental health professionals who have been reviewing the company’s personnel records.
Gou personally led six busloads of journalists through the industrial park, which looks much like a small city. The palm-tree lined streets had fast food restaurants, bakeries and banks. He showed off the complex’s swimming pool and a large mental health center, with a long row of women working telephone hotlines.
Labor activists say the string of suicides back up their long-standing allegations that workers toil in terrible conditions at Foxconn. They claim shifts are long, the assembly line moves too fast and managers enforce military-style discipline on the work force.
But Foxconn has insisted that workers are treated well and are protected by social responsibility programs that ensure their welfare.
Foxconn is a major manufacturer for Apple, and the US company said it has talked to Foxconn’s senior management about the suicides and believes the firm is taking the matter seriously.
“We are saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “Apple is deeply committed to ensuring that conditions throughout our supply chain are safe and workers are treated with respect and dignity.”
“A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events, and we will continue our ongoing inspections of the facilities where our products are made,” he said.
Dell said it was also looking into Foxconn’s situation.
“Any reports of poor working conditions in Dell’s supply chain are investigated and, if warranted, appropriate action is taken,” Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn said via e-mail.
“We expect our suppliers to employ the same high standards we do in our own facilities,” Blackburn said.
Nokia Corp spokeswoman Louise Ingram declined to comment on specific suicide cases.
“Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. We set strict requirements to all our suppliers, including Foxconn, and follow-up on them regularly,” she said.
Meanwhile, Foxconn yesterday reportedly urged its workers to promise in writing not to kill themselves.
China’s Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper published a photograph of a memo with a Foxconn letterhead that it said all employees were being asked to sign.
“I promise never to hurt myself or others in an extreme manner,” said a section of the memo seen by the paper.
It also asked employees to allow the company to send them to a medical institution if they appeared to be in an “abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others.”
One Foxconn worker told the newspaper he had refused to sign because the company was seeking the right to institutionalize employees.
“If I bicker with my supervisor, will I be sent to a mental hospital?” he said.
Ahead of yesterday’s media tour of the Shenzhen site, the parents and sister of Ma Xiangqian, who committed suicide in January, wept and knelt on the ground at the gates, the father’s tears dripping on a picture of his son. Behind them were signs displaying the fruits of the workers’ labor — Hewlett-Packard computer screens, Sony TVs and Nokia handsets.
Foxconn official Louis Woo, one of the tour leaders, said the company was starting a 24-hour helpline and planned to divide workers into groups of under 50, to counter isolation.
“The number one priority has to be to try to stop this spate of suicides,” Woo said.
Part of the problem, he said, is that a “pretty high number” of employees are aged from 18 to 24 — the prime age for suicides.
Many are also far away from their homes in remote parts of China for the first time, he said.
The company was also said to be hanging safety nets around buildings at the Shenzhen complex.
The Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing was working with the company and local authorities to implement “effective measures” against more suicides.
“We are deeply sorry for the Foxconn employees who jumped to their death,” a spokesman at the office, Yang Yi (楊毅), told a news conference.
But beyond the factory gates, workers told of long hours, harsh supervisors and low pay. A 21-year-old employee from Guangxi told the Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post how she worked 12-hours a day, six days a week.
“The atmosphere inside our workplaces is so tight and depressing that we’re not allowed to speak to each other for 12 hours or you’ll be reproached by your supervisors,” she said.
Another worker, from Hunan Province, complained that the assembly line moved too fast and she had to check thousands of motherboards for electronic gadgets every day.
The 22-year-old’s monthly salary, including overtime, was 2,000 yuan (US$300) — about the same as the US price of a 32 gigabyte iPhone.
“I feel like I have an empty life and work like a machine,” she told the paper.
But there was no shortage of people trying to get through the factory gates. Around 8,000 people apply to work at the factory every day, Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun (劉坤) told the state-run China Daily.
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