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Sometimes there are things that my brain fails to understand.

Foxconn is the company that puts together lots of electronic devices – Playstations, Xboxes, iPhones, iPads, the Kindle, Sony Reader.

There have been reports of an unusually high number of suicides at Foxconn’s factories this year. It’s getting some press coverage – However, it’s a human tendency to dismiss it as just a Press creation. After all, who wants to admit that people who put together our iPhones and Kindles have such terrible work conditions that they want to jump off buildings.

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald – Well, I really don’t know how to process it. However, it’s forced me to write about it – a weak excuse but better than nothing.

Let’s start with a detour.

Henry Ford and Welfare Capitalism

Courtesy Wikipedia -

 Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914. The revolutionary program called for a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week, while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.

(Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later made them days off.)

Ford says that with this voluntary change, labor turnover in his plants went from huge to so small that he stopped bothering to measure it.

Here we have an example of an industrialist who made things better for his workers and for himself. Now, let’s take a look at Foxconn.

Foxconn is making its workers promise not to kill themselves

Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn’s parent company (and Foxconn’s founder), flew in on his private jet to showcase a Foxconn factory and the measures they had taken to reduce worker suicides -

1. Workers have been told to sign letters promising not to kill themselves. 
2. Workers have agreed to be institutionalized if they show strange mental and physical behavior. 
3. Nets are being hung around buildings to deter workers. 
4. Roof patrols are being arranged.  
5. There are tension release rooms where you can beat up dummies to release your stress and frustration.

Here’s a quote that, well, is hard to comprehend -

[Regarding safety nets being installed around buildings]

“If they jump, they’ll fall into the safety nets, so their lives will be saved,” a contractor told the channel.

Your workers are jumping off their work buildings and you’re installing safety nets. What sort of nonsense is this.

Why are Foxconn focusing on the symptoms rather than the core problem?

What person in their right mind thinks it’s a good idea to get workers to sign a letter promising not to kill themselves? The solution isn’t to put up safety nets or start roof patrols – just avoid making your workers so miserable that they want to kill themselves.

Here is the real problem -

1. 12 hours workdays, 6 days a week. 
2. Workers not allowed to talk to each other during the 12 hours.  
3. Having to live in the factory itself. 
4. A monthly salary of $300.
5. Working on products that they can never afford. Imagine if you worked at Ford but could never afford a Ford car.
6. No path to a better life – No American dream. No European social safety net.
7. Working for a company that has the gall to treat you like a slave – Can you ever imagine a company in US or Europe or Canada getting an employee to sign a letter giving the company the right to put the employee in a mental asylum?

This is wrong on so many levels.

Years of Abuse can’t be hidden any more

From Wikipedia it seems that Foxconn have been doing this since 2006 -

In June 2006, allegations of Foxconn operating abusive employment practices came to light as reported by Mail that were later denied by Foxconn. Apple launched an investigation into these claims.

The result was that the claims of mistreatment of employees were judged by the Apple inspection team to be largely unfounded, but the inspection team also discovered that at peak production times some of the employees were working more hours than Apple’s acceptable “Code of Conduct” limit of 60 hours and 25% of the time workers did not get at least one day off each week.

It’s awfully easy to find claims of mistreatment to be unfounded when you have billions of dollars of profit on the line. However, when people are jumping from buildings you can no longer pretend. 

Don’t know what to write because haven’t done anything myself - it’s not as if suggesting something would be appropriate.

Filed under: Reality Tagged: | lack thereof, value of human life