When Workers Jump From Buildings

by Cesar Bacani, 01 June 2010

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Apple contract manufacturing Dell Foxconn Hewlett Packard Nokia Sony suicides

I remember visiting a major Chinese telecom equipment company in Shenzhen a few years back. I was met at the train station by a company limousine, which whisked me to the company’s 100-hectare headquarters, R&D centres, factories and housing for 20,000 employees. The buildings and facilities were world-class; the dormitories and detached housing units comfortable and spacious. There was a clubhouse, a gym, a pool.

But where were the workers? They’re all out on the assembly lines, explained the nice PR lady who hosted me to a sumptuous lunch at the company’s executive dining room. I got to speak to top executives and tried out snazzy prototype products, but I never got to see or speak with anyone working in the factories.

That experience came to mind when I read reports of visits by reporters to the sprawling facilities in Shenzhen of Taiwan-owned Foxconn Technology Group, which makes the iPod, iPhone and iPad for Apple and other products for Nokia, Sony, Dell and HP. Company chairman Terry Gou showed off Olympic-sized swimming pools, Internet cafes, fast-food restaurants, palm-tree lined avenues and high-rise dormitories for the company’s 420,000 workers.

Some of those towering structures were the grisly platforms from which eight workers jumped to their death so far this year. Three others survived their suicide attempts, the latest one being a 25-year-old man who slashed his wrists on May 27, one day after Gou held his press tour. The beleaguered chairman, whose estimated US$6 billion fortune makes him the third-richest person in Taiwan, said Foxconn was not a sweatshop and should not be blamed for the suicides.

“Generally, the suicide rate in a society will increase when its GDP rises,” the South China Morning Post quoted him as telling some 200 Chinese and foreign journalists at the press tour. “I’ve consulted psychologists and they told me the suicide rate at Foxconn is much lower than the country's average.”

Limits of regimentation

But media interviews with Foxconn workers suggest that working conditions may have been too much for some employees. “How can I have time for swimming?” a 21-year-old worker from Guangxi province asked Post reporter Fiona Tam. She said she was given only half an hour to eat, and that includes the time to walk to the crowded canteen and queue for food, which is free for all workers. “Sometimes, there are only 10 minutes left for me to swallow my lunch.”

A 22-year-old man from Henan, who had just come off his 8 p.m. to 11 a.m. shift, told the Post that he had almost forgotten how to talk in his three years with the company. “To avoid being reproached by the supervisors, you’d better keep quiet during the whole shift and focus on the things on the assembly lines,” he said. “I'm so tired after work, and there are only eight hours for me to eat, sleep and get a shower. Many of us don’t know our roommates’ names even after living together for years.”

Talking heads on TV and radio refer to the phenomenon of copycat suicides at Foxconn, and they may be right. But it seems to me that those workers who jumped to their deaths must have really been wretched to even contemplate ending their life. And since they work and live at the Foxconn enclave in Shenzhen, it follows that conditions in the assembly lines and dormitories must have contributed to their unhappiness.

Money problems could have something to do it with it as well. A Sichuan worker told the Post that he earns an average of RMB1,800 (US$219) a month – if he works overtime for 100 hours. He sends most of his wages home, keeping only RMB500 (US$73) for himself.

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