I read this morning in The Sun that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs had on Tuesday defended conditions at the suicide factory, saying “Foxconn is not a sweatshop. You go in this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice” (p 18). Steve is perhaps being very naïve. Worse, he’s missing the point. Just because Foxconn has “great” facilities does not mean that workers don’t feel alienated or depressed or suicidal. I am not sure if the workers can even afford to patronize these places – given that their wages are meager and/or hard-earned cash must be put aside as savings to be sent home.
I also read this WHO article “Mental health and Substance Abuse” (Webpage http://www.searo.who.int/en/section1174/section1199/section1567/section1824_8078.htm, accessed today) and two statements in this feature were telling – “Suicide is one of the leading causes of death across the world, especially in the 15-35 year age group” and “Globally, nearly 60% of these deaths are among young adults in their productive years of life”. A frightening situation, isn’t it?
Workers on a Foxconn assembly line
Photo credit: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-55314.html
But wait. Before we think that Foxconn shouldn’t shoulder all the blame if workers take their own lives – things are not what they seem. In fact, Der Spiegel's Wieland Wagner went inside the humongous mall-like Foxconn factory complex – where 300,000 employees live according to strict, Orwellian rules, work 12-hour shifts and sleep in crowded dormitory conditions – to try to look for insights into this phenomenon. Here, I reproduce excerpts from the said article:
"The series of apparent or attempted suicides has shaken the management of China's largest electronics manufacturer. Liu Kun, 40, who calls himself the director of media relations, goes around in a sweat-soaked shirt. He avoids the word 'factory,' preferring the word 'campus' – as if Foxconn were a university. In a battery-driven golf cart... Liu shows a visitor around the palm-lined streets. They want to prove how good the workers have it.
Liu points proudly at all the shops. Fast-food chains have franchises here; the Foxconn village has a factory hospital, where workers can walk in for treatment; there's a football stadium, a fitness center, a number of Internet cafés, a rehearsal room for the corporate dance troupe and a kind of academy. Television monitors installed along the streets – or in the cafeterias – play a corporate TV channel.
These opportunities for diversion don't change the fact that Foxconn workers have to spend their lives almost entirely on the complex. One cargo truck after another delivers components and carries away finished products. There are no warehouses at Foxconn. Once workers assemble a mobile phone or a laptop, the device goes straight to customers. This flow of products can't slow down. On Foxconn streets, workers are allowed to walk alongside each other only in pairs. If there are three of them, they must form a line."
“But within the residential buildings, workers continue their lives according to the logic of low-cost production. In rooms filled with 10 beds, half the residents lie exhausted on their mattresses. Some of those who find it too cramped here are stretched out in front of the televisions which hang in every stairway. Every break is precious: Soon they have to return to their next 12-hour shift”.
I must really encourage everyone to read the entire article at webpage http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,697296,00.html, posted May 28, 2010.
So obviously, it goes without saying that Foxconn must strengthen efforts to help their workers before they contemplate taking that fatal step. Quickly.
Ma Zishan (right) and Gao Zhao Ying mourn the death of their son Ma Xiangqian outside the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen on Wednesday. They question the official report of Ma Xianquian's death and claim he was brutalized by a production manager over a broken drill machine.
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