Chinese iPad Factory Staff Forced To Sign 'No Suicide' Pledge

An anonymous reader writes "Employees at Foxconn facilities in China, used to manufacture the iPhone and iPad, were forced to sign a pledge not to commit suicide after over a dozen staff killed themselves over the last 16 months. The revelation is the latest in a series of findings about the treatment of workers at Foxconn plants, where staff often work six 12-hour shifts a week, 98 hours of overtime in a month, and live in dormitories that look and feel like prison blocks."

Pffft

[proverbialcow]

Good luck enforcing it.

That'll show them

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they better not kill themselves OR ELSE!

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

See this is why I don't understand everyone bitching about the American economy being broken. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't... but one thing is for sure. We are using paid employee's to try and compete with a country that essentially uses prisoners to power there economy. Whos confused about why we are losing??

Re:Pffft

[proverbialcow]

If they were forced to sign it, then it was signed under duress and it's not enforceable. :)

In America that's true, but I have my doubts about China.

Re:Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

The legality of this, I couldn't say.

I'm sure China doesn't give a fuck. If they did, requiring an employee to work 70 hours a week for $10 a day and share living space with two dozen other employees wouldn't be legal in the first place.

What a way to treat the symptoms

[dmomo]

That's akin to saying, "hey, when you kill yourself, they know we are torturing you, so please stop killing yourself".

Who's signing the "only work so many hours" pledge?

Suicide nets

[lavagolemking]

FTA:

Anti-suicide nets were put up around the dormitory buildings on the advice of psychologists.

If you have to put up suicide nets and make people sign contracts promising not to kill themself then you're doing it wrong.

Re:Ugh

[peragrin]

The problem is foxconn while notable is better than many other places because Apple is forcing them to step up. you don't hear about Acer's companies or another's because they are generally doing nothing.

Apple is forcing foxconn to step up and treat it's people better. That is why it is news.

Re:Suicide nets

[lennier]

If you have to put up suicide nets and make people sign contracts promising not to kill themself then you're doing it wrong.

So why are we still importing anything that this company makes?

And if China's laws can't protect workers from this company, then why are we still importing anything China makes?

Re:Ugh

[evildarkdeathclicheo]

Pardon? Capitalism has never functioned in the history of the world without slavery. True, some countries outlawed slavery, including the US, but migrant workers and outsourcing overseas filled in the gap that slavery left behind. The American economy is only broken if you disagree with the concept of slavery. No one in the US is trying to use paid employees to try and compete with a country that uses prisoners to power their economy. It is AMERICA that is using prisoners in other countries to power ITS OWN economy . . . only because it's illegal to do so within its own borders. Don't kid yourself and think that just because it doesn't happen in your own backyard that it isn't your, or your neighbors, own fault. You wouldn't be able to post on slashdot without this slave/prisoner labor. -W

Re:Pffft

[vlm]

FTFA: "And they were made to promise that if they did, their families would only seek the legal minimum in damages."

So, there is some form of enforcement after all. The legality of this, I couldn't say.

I don't think I'm violating a NDA here, because this is a "well known" liability limiting move.

So anyone killed by, say, an overhead crane dropping a pallet on their heads, can be ruled a suicide, and they promise their family only gets legal minimum in damages. I'm only slightly tongue in cheek with the crane example, as the company would rule the victim should have been looking up, only a suicidal person would not run away as the pallet falls on them, etc. Pretty much anything other than blatant 1st deg murder with numerous witnesses would qualify.

How much legal weight something like this holds is mysterious. If it intimidates just one victims family, it certainly pays for the cost of paperwork.

Re:Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, you think China cares about the legality of something. Their economy is being built upon the broken backs of workers just like those at Foxconn. As the "pledge" indicates, the only worker they don't want is a dead worker, because they can't squeeze every last dime and ounce of life out of someone they've already finished.

Re:Ugh

[operagost]

If it's between selling drugs and going hungry, I could see why people might choose the former.

It's rarely that kind of dilemma. I mean, we could justify all sorts of crimes that way: if it's between prostituting your child and going hungry; between armed robbery and going hungry; between grand theft and going hungry...

Re:Ugh

[mrnobo1024]

Nobody is confused. everybody just wants to pretend we can compete with that. We can't.

Either we have to lower standards for our workers, or they have to raise theirs.

Or, we could bring back what we used to have before the globalists took over circa 1970 and the standard of living here stopped growing: tariffs.

Although, I suppose throwing the globalists out to do that would probably require an armed revolution too.

Not evil

[Weaselmancer]

A corporation exists to maximize profit. So if you're going to anthropomorphize a company it's not evil, it just doesn't care about evil.

So the proper term would be sociopathic. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Suicide nets

[operagost]

Because hipsters need their iPhones so they can tweet about how America is destroying the planet.

Re:Suicide nets

[jandrese]

Because it's cheap as hell. Do you investigate the working conditions at the manufacturer for every product you buy? How about your toothbrush? Your underwear? Your ballpoint pen?

Or do you just pick the cheapest one that meets your minimum critera? It's not like manufacturers put "Made with Slave Labor!" on the package.

Re:Ugh

[Velex]

That's probably why you don't see a lot of white collar people selling drugs.

Not to derail the topic too far, but I see white collar people selling addictive drugs that give the user a high all the time. It's just that when we're talking about drugs that are approved by big pharma/big government, the dealer is called a doctor. And believe me, doctors act just like drug dealers, too. I had one doctor start to tell me he would call a hit out on me if I couldn't make his alpha pager work when it was turned off. According to the board of directors at a local hospital, it may not be safe for me to be one of their patients because of a dispute they had about a bill. Doctors are drug dealers, little more, and once you figure that you, a lot of things start to make sense about the prohibition of substances such as marihuana. The medical establishment doesn't want competition from a substance that doesn't cost a dime to grow.

Re:Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

Not China, business. Used to be like this in the United States of America too, has nothing to do with the Government. Things became better in the US not because of the government, but because of Union organization and dollars and cents.

Same thing will happen in China as the US falls apart and becomes France but without the social safety net by the end of the 21st Century. Good times!

Re:Pffft

[cdrguru]

Why wouldn't it be legal? After all, it is about 1000 times better than folks living on the factory farms have it where it is 12 hours of work for a handful of rice.

The rural folks in China have it really, really bad and they are even more motivated to move to the city than the folks in Mexico are to come to the US. After all, in Mexico you might get $2 for a day's work and have your own shack. People are quite willing to cross the desert with signs that pretty much say "If you continue you will die" because they can make $50 a day and feed their entire family on one person's wages.

In China a little thing like suicide isn't going to deter them in the slightest. I suspect as long as they aren't hit by falling bodies they are perfectly OK with a 1% chance they might really want to commit suicide if they take a crappy job.

Re:All bets are off!

[AK Marc]

There's massive differences. For one, the Communists used their political power to gain economic power. And in the US, the Capitalists used their economic power to gain political power. They are like complete opposites. Or would be, if we could tell them apart.

Re:Pffft

[number11]

Please stop your silly neo-Marxist comments. The only reason those workers put up with $10 daily and those dorms is simply because their other alternatives stink even more.

My mistake. They are clearly living in a capitalist paradise.