Apple's parts supplier Foxconn faces more controversy

Last time a reporter tried to penetrate Apple's veil of secrecy, security guards employed by their parts supplier, Foxconn, beat up the reporters involved.  But questions had to be answered in the wake of the suicide/potential murder of a Foxconn employee which occurred after the employee lost an iPhone prototype.

Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly was determined to find out the true story, and sent a reporter in undercover, posing as a new employee.  Given the fact that Foxconn's Shenzen plant that builds Apple's iPads, iPods, and iPhones has 400,000 employees, that part wasn't too hard.

What was hard, was for the reporter to endure the plant's reportedly hellish working conditions for 28 days. 

So far in the last four and a half months seven workers from the plant have committed suicide, and at least 9 have attempted suicide.  According to reporter Liu Zhi Yi who infiltrated the plant, the likely reason why was that they felt taking their own life was the only option to escape the hellish working conditions of the plant.

According to Liu, the plant makes employees work around the clock, only pausing briefly to eat or sleep.  Most of the time the employees are standing, seldom able to sit down and rest their weary legs.  This is perfectly legal, as employees are required to sign a special overtime document that override Chinese workplace laws and essentially allows the employer to demand whatever hours they want from you, without additional compensation.

Foxconn pays the workers far too little for them to hope to buy one of the Apple products they assemble.  It pays them only 900 Chinese Yuan a month —about $130 USD.  Still the workers have dreams.  They joke that their carts that they haul Apple materials on are "BMWs", dreaming of real BMWs.  They buy lottery tickets and bet on horse races in hopes of miraculously being handed an escape from their purgatory.

But for most, they will live out their lives slaving away to build Apple's products, constantly in danger, while earning only a pittance.  So, according to the newspaper there's little surprise some employees fall into deep despair.

Foxconn at the request of Apple and Chinese state officials has made some steps to decrease the suicide rates.  It's hired counselors and given workers dummies to beat on to vent their rage.  And it's even been so kind as to hire Buddhist monks to allow the souls of those who committed to suicide to escape purgatory.

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since the story was written suicides have climbed still higher at this plant and of course no word from apple and no huge public  outrage from apple nuts which screm and demand law suits against microsoft and other competitors who dare compete  against their god Jobs and his minions. lol 

Welcome to Chinese Factories, I hope you only buy Made in the USA products Paul..

Requests from Apple I see, but no requests from Dell or HP who also have products made in the same factory.

knob

I think this story was taken from PC world or DailyTech. They always gather all absurd news against Apple.

Their articles always rely on their reader's expectation that Apple is an evil empire and that all electronics come from China.

Seriously, the next iPhone was not stolen from a chinese factory. And, iPods and iPhones are only 'assembled' in China; all the expensive components are from Japan, USA, etc..

That's sensationalism for ya

The Chinese factory workers should be working much harder, so that the ipad might be cheaper for me to buy.

So, what's new? Apple has a history of vile business practices - anti-trust, vendor lock-in and piss-poor conditions for workers. A bit like most other multi-national corporations. Apple's market value didn't surpass that of Microsoft's last week by giving their factory workers and extra ten minute tea-break. How could it? The pointless Apple/Microsoft debate will rage on while the worlds mini and supercomputers operating now in excess of 1 PetaFlop are machines built with off-the-shelf components and server class CPU's running linux.

Just another reason why Mac's suck.

phil said 'The Chinese factory workers should be working much harder, so that the ipad might be cheaper for me to buy.'

fell off my chair laughing!!!

I was out with a Chinese girl last weekend. She proudly told me that all the clothes she was wearing had been made by her little sisters back home in China. She was not amused when I told her that mine probably were too...

China has a huge workforce and the western companies all make use of their services...Apple, HP, Dell are all assembled/built (an extremely fine line) by that factory at its two locations in Shen Zhen just across the border from Hong Kong. The expensive parts are what? The case is Chinese, the pc boards are chinese, the components are chinese, maybe you mean the processor - most likely these are either of chinese, Malay or Thai origin - nobody in their right mind these days would make a processor in the USA unless they are independently wealthy, and in fact Japan is way too expensive too - many Japanese products are actually "only assembled" in Japan, but actual manufacture happens in factories in Malaysia, Thailand or China - the design is Japanese, and the QA is theirs but thats about it...oh...maybe the packing... maybe....

pcworld is actually owned by macworld and often prasies mac more then anything I got it from a different website becuase I stopped reading pc world for that reason