As you all know, in 2010 there was a wave of suicides (12 in a few days) in one of the factories –based in Shenzhen- producing Apple’s products.
Foxconn is a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, and the firm also produces for brands such as Dell, Sony Corp. Hewlett-Packard and Nokia. Out of 900,000 workers, Foxconn employs nearly half of them in Shenzhen.
The first suicide was done by a 19 years old who had joined the factory the month before. Then a 21 years old suicided too, and the investigation revealed there was no link with Foxconn. Apparently, the person was suffering from loneliness and depression…but then suicides happened again.
The China Labor Watch accused Foxconn of a military-style management, which leads to a lot of pressure and overtime work. See after an extract from International Business Time:
“Most of whom are in their early 20s with little or no social support, labor for up to 12 hours at a stretch on highly-repetitive, assembly-line tasks without any break and sometimes the workers are forced to work even on weekends. The workers, the group said, have often complained to them that they are "extremely tired, with tremendous pressure." Li Qiang, the group's executive director, said Foxconn "tramples" workers' personal values for the sake of efficiency.”
Plus, employees on the same production line are not allowed to talk during working hours. They are really isolated as being cut from their families and lovers. It is kind of a microcosm.
Last year, Steve Jobs was asked about these working conditions, he said first than the suicide rate was lower than in the US. Also, he said: "It's a factory, but they have restaurants and movie theatres.”
In addition, workers are manipulating hazardous chemical. The n-hexane used for screen is very strong and made dozens of workers fall ill, faint, and having fertility issues. One of them – Guo Ruiqiang- wrote a letter to Steve Jobs to alert him on health issues and to ask the company some compensation. They never got any answer from the firm and Guo said last week: “I care more about my health than Jobs' passing away,” said Guo. “With Jobs dead, I feel more lost than before. I really don't know what to do.”
After reading this, do you think your buying process will be affected next time you want to buy an Apple product?
How do you think Apple should have reacted?
I think it is unfair and appalling but how many companies/high-tech companies are also concerning by these production problems? What can we do, us, poor consumers?
RépondreSupprimerTo my mind it is unacceptable to have such dangerous working conditions for a company who wants to keep its brand image. The CEO should first of all be worried of the wellfare of its employees in order to be perceived as a reliable and qualitative brand!
RépondreSupprimeri think that Apple is just like other companies, but as sustainability is the future of a brand, the executives should be more careful and show that they are doing efforts. In Russia employees at factories are provides with free milk and eggs in order to decrease the bad chemical effects.
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