Hey Steve Jobs, how about worrying less about porn and more about the blood on your hands?
 

i've always looked at that hypocrite as just another douchebag in a black turtleneck anyway but read this story, jesus christ, this massive Chinese factory where Apple products are manufactured, the workers are killing themselves at such an alarming rate they're putting up netting around the factory and making the workers sign waivers promising not to kill themselves - absurd :1orglaugh

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/28/h...urt-apple.html

How Chinese Suicides Could Hurt Apple

A giant manufacturer of iPhones and other popular electronics has a bad employee problem: they?re killing themselves.

Western shoppers in general don?t spend a lot of time thinking about the origins of their brand-name sneakers and electronic devices. But when a sweatshop controversy arises, it can mean trouble for companies like Nike and Gap.

So the spate of troubling suicides at Foxconn Technology Group, a major Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, presents a problem for companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell?and their gleaming, precision-engineered reputations. At least 10 workers have taken their lives this year, and another 20 have reportedly been stopped during attempts, at the massive Foxconn facilities in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. There, some 400,000 workers (roughly the same population as Miami) live in dormitories and manufacture products like Apple?s iPhone, as well as components for Dell, HP, Sony, Nokia, and other major vendors.

Publicity over the deaths has been bad enough to bring Terry Gou, the billionaire CEO of Foxconn?s parent company, to lead journalists on a tour of the plant Thursday to rebut charges that he operates a system of sweatshops. Just hours afterward, another employee leapt to his death, and one more was rushed to the hospital with slashed wrists.

The Foxconn suicides are a public relations crisis for everyone involved. As the company rushed to string safety nets around the buildings where workers live, Dell, HP, and Apple announced that they would each investigate working conditions at the supplier?s facilities. Reports of conditions at the secretive company?s facilities say that employees work long hours performing rote tasks to keep up with the pace of demand. Foxconn?s campus has swimming pools and recreational activities, but workers say they are too tired to ever take part. Apple maintains that workers in its supply chain are limited to a max of 60 hours per week, including overtime. HP and Dell have similar supplier code-of-conduct statements.

The timing could hardly be worse. Dell is promoting its slick new Streak tablet, HP is reinvigorating its own tablet plans with a $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, and Apple is just beginning to sell the iPad worldwide. They want consumers thinking about the bright new future their devices promise?not the masses of Asian workers who manufacture them for low wages.

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Instead of chattering about how the Android operating system will work on Dell?s Streak, bloggers are wondering aloud if, given China?s national suicide rate of between 13 and 15 per 100,000 (per the World Health Organization), a dozen or so suicides at Foxconn is actually below average. It?s impossible to say, given the demographic differences between Foxconn?s workforce and the Chinese population at large, and the difficulties of projecting the last few weeks onto a full calendar year. ?If there are really 300,000 people who work at this place, then you?d expect to see many dozen suicides over the course of the year,? Dr. Ian Cook, the director of UCLA?s depression research program, tells NEWSWEEK. ?The thing that gets everyone?s attention is that they?re all happening in such close timing.? There?s also the fact that the deaths have come on Foxconn property?primarily by workers jumping or falling from the tops of their dormitory buildings. These are not the images that Apple wants in consumers? minds as they contemplate purchasing an $829 3G iPad.

The dire situation of Foxconn workers first made headlines last July, when 25-year-old Sun Danyong leapt to his death after the company had investigated him?roughed him up, some said?as the source of a lost iPhone prototype. Apple issued a two-sentence statement.

Apple, Dell, and HP?s actions appear limited. Aside from insisting on better conditions and more counseling for workers, the companies can?t meaningfully change their business relationships with Foxconn?the supplier is just that big and manufactures components just that cheaply. ?I?d be amazed if they could radically transform the system they have in place now,? says Richard McCormack, editor of Manufacturing & Technology News and an expert on global supply chains.

Could Apple simply relocate its manufacturing to another country with a large pool of cheap labor, such as Brazil or India? ?You just can?t do it. You need this incredible base of knowledge,? McCormack says. ?The knowledge that?s in an iPad, the knowledge of making all the parts that are in that product are spread everywhere in the world?but only a few companies are able to integrate it into one product.? He said it has taken Apple two decades to build its supply chain and ?lean manufacturing, just-in-time? model, and that as big as Foxconn is?some reports have its payroll as high as 800,000?there are many multiples of that number of people supplying its plants, mining metals, refining chemicals, making glass, and providing services like food.

Foxconn announced Friday that it would increase wages by 20 percent to boost morale and forestall the copycat effect that can follow well-publicized suicides. Meanwhile, the frenzy of coverage continues, from reporters in China and bloggers in the United States. The gadget site Gizmodo?already the object of Apple CEO Steve Jobs?s fury for buying and publishing details about a lost iPhone prototype?was barely able to keep up with the pace of the suicides Thursday. ?While we recently published news of the 12th Foxconn employee to attempt a suicide, and then immediately updated the story with news of a 13th jumper, those reports are already dated,? Mark Wilson wrote, in an item illustrated with a TV news image of another worker sitting on the ledge of a roof. The blog Shanghaiist published what it said was a letter Foxconn is asking its employees to sign, ?promising that they won?t kill themselves.?

As the world?s largest contract electronics manufacturer, Foxconn?s troubles affect a number of technology companies, but none more so than Apple. The maker of iPhones, iPads, and iPods awed the business world Wednesday when it edged past its longtime archrival, Microsoft, to become America?s most valuable technology company, with a market capitalization of $222 billion. As The New York Times noted, this is despite Microsoft having greater net income ($14.6 billion to $5.7 billion) as well as cash and short-term investments ($39.7 billion to $23.1 billion)??which makes the value assigned by the market to Apple, essentially a bet on its future prospects, all the more remarkable.? That is why the Foxconn suicides can be so damaging, with so much of Apple?s fortune tied up in perception. In Hong Kong this week, protesters are burning cardboard cutouts of iPhones.

What will happen in Shenzhen? ?My hope would be that with all the attention that?s being paid to the situation, to the workers, that this may engender some changes that will help,? says UCLA?s Cook. ?But time alone will tell. Even in clinical practice, trying to predict suicide is one of the least reliable things for a doctor to predict.?

10 suicides out of 400,000 workers does not seem to be a real issue.

nice reading

the dude has always been a cunt.

good point but still - we've pretty much killed off the manufacturing industry sentencing millions and millions of people to unemployment or shitty paid jobs in the service industry and shipped those jobs to China and other countries where they are worked to the bone for pennies.

a massive fail for human individuals everywhere unless you're in the 1% or less who's getting rich off it.

China needs to go back to producing noodles and trinkets and the US needs to go back to manufacturing good products.

FoxConn manufactures products for many other brands, why is Apple being singled out?

Oh, and FoxConn bumped the salaries by 20% this week.

didnt old bill gates steal something from apple back in the day???

they are all the same.....

Actually, real research into this would reveal:

avg suicide rate in china is 14 per 100000, thus far more than in that factory!!!

http://m.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/med...cide-risk/1356

Also, it would be helpful to see the suicide levels at other factors in the same industry and among differing industry segments.

Apple has always been a bunch of hypocrites.

steve jobs is probably into no jerk religion, i cant think any other reason :D

I guess an apple a day has no power over suicide....

I am writing an app that is like a rubik's cube.

If you win a factory work throws themselves off the roof.

Curious as to whether Apple will approve it for the app store.

As BD said, 10 out of 400k isn't bad; may actually even be good! As others have pointed out, Apple is being singled out here.

I am not an Apple fanboy. The last Apple I bought was a chunky iPod a few years back.

As said, the suicide rate at the plant is lower than the country's national average. Maybe we should praise Apple since that is the case! :)

> a letter Foxconn is asking its employees to sign, “promising that they won’t kill themselves.”
or else they fire and sue them?

it's fucked up no matter what statistics say. but i guess it could have been much worse if we didn't move most of our manufacturing there.

who cares, china has so many damn people they can lose a few hundred.

Isn't there a pride thing in China where if someone fucks up really bad they do an honor killing of themselves?

Maybe the jumpers were late to work or exhausted their vacation days and felt the need to punish themselves.

(I may be thinking about Japan ... it's too late and I am too tired to try to figure out how to manipulate Google to get the answer)

its an old Japanese tradition of samurai's - kamikaze

Statistics just show what happened. It is about willpower and your strength to achieve what you desire.

For example, let's you want to lose weight and you start measuring your calorie statistics. Let's say all day all you do is eat pie. Well, you can write down detailed statistics about how you eat 4,000 calories of pie everyday - but these statistics are not going to help you. Losing weight is about the willpower.

These Chinese suicides are troubling news. The news says that they leap to death and slash wrists. Supposedly the worker goes to work because he is willing to work (he was not forced to start working). Of course, once a person signs a contract - he can't back out (even if he has to do something that becomes very upleasant). The advice is don't sign a contract that you might regret. Of course, a person has to work for money or beg for money to buy the food to eat to survive.

Japanese Samurai would rather kill themselves than be captured by an enemy for interrogation and torture.

You have to much hate mutt.

They said that a lot of these people are tempted to jump because Foxconn pays the families of those who commit suicide a payout that is about 10 times that of their yearly salary.

So they are doing it as a way to take care of their family.

Not to stick up for Apple, but if you took 400,000 people from anywhere, at least 10 would probably kill themselves for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_suicide_rate

Factory would be pretty far down this list if it was a country.