back to article Another suicide at Apple's Chinese supplier

Yet another employee of the world's largest electronics assembler - Foxconn, maker of products for Apple, HP, and others - has has killed herself. The Associated Press reports that the 24 year-old woman's death brings the total of suicidal Foxconn workers to eight for the year. Bloomberg puts the total at six. The Taipei Times …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Don S.

    meh

    PRC suicide rate is 13.9 people per 100,000 per year.

    Foxconn reportedly has 330,000 employees.

    This wouldn't even be a story if Foxconn wasn't an Apple supplier.

    1. The BigYin

      Just because...

      ...they are within statistical limits does not make it right.

      Assuming you figure is accurate, and as you do not cite source I can't be sure it is. WHO has some data from 2003 http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/ Other suites report figures of 250,000-300,000 (e.g http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/26/china.jonathanwatts) Given that China has about 1.3 billion people in it, this gives a suicide rate of around 21 per 100,000, higher than what you quote.

      Perhaps Foxconn are doing something, but in such a climate they are pissing into the wind. The Apple angle certainly makes it newsworthy, but that does not change the fact that there is something deeply wrong in China.

      Having just said that, the suicide rates for males in the USA is higher than for males in China according to WHO.

  2. Robin Layfield
    Jobs Horns

    I wonder....

    I wonder if it has anything to do with this...

    Another iPhone 4G found

    http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/another-iphone-4g-found/

  3. Bill Neal
    Big Brother

    Yeah, and...

    I don't expect anybody to be startled by this news. It is news, but apple isn't the only company using sweatshops. and you don't see those other big companies going out of business because of it. Quite the opposite is true. outsourcing seems to be the only thing keeping most companies viable & competitive. It may be close to slavery, but hey, what are YOU gonna do about it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      to put it in perspective

      imagine if the suicides had been at a BP, Enron, Blackwater or Exxon primary supplier. Would anyone give a rip about the "average" of suicides at all? Or would the Apple defenders join up in the inevitable media frenzy that would end up with the current Administration exploiting the situation for more taxes, regulation, and mandated unelected Administration cronies as majority shareholders/board members?

      Just because something is bad, and somebody else "did the same thing", does not give the next bad event a free pass.

    2. The BigYin
      FAIL

      Not buy Apple?

      Simple enough. I don't buy Nike, Nestle or any Israeli goods for similar reasons. It might not seem like much, in fact it probably isn't much, but it is something I (and anyone else) can do.

  4. ratfox
    Dead Vulture

    Come on, reg, write some real news stories

    6 or 8 suicides on a workforce of 300'000 people?

    The suicide rate in China is around 13 per 100'000, according to the Wikicult.

    If the company had only 8 suicides this year, they are already way under the national average.

    It might well be that people suicide for reasons that are entirely unrelated to their job, you know...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Wikipedia?

      FFS. Wikipedia is not a a good source of data. Do not rely on Wikipedia for anything. If Wikipedia says the sky is green, try looking out the bloody window and making sure.

      Why in the name of hell do people think that Wikipedia is the oracle of all truth when it manifestly isn't?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Statistcally average?

    Any suicide is tragic, but for a company that employs over 300,000 people and for a country with an average annual suicide rate of approx 14 suicides per 100,000 people per year, this doesn't seem particularly abnormal.

    Wonder what the suicide rate of other very large IT companies is? Probably in line with the profile of the countries where they employ people I'd suspect.

    A non-story then?

    1. Notas Badoff
      Megaphone

      No life to look forward to...

      Suicides per 100,000 population across the whole population seems a crude gloss to throw over this. Let's see... female in a land of way too many bachelors, 24 years old and not exactly facing the lack of health/social safety net that the elders face, employed when many aren't, and probably had some skills.

      Maybe it was social crudities in the workplace? Hmm, reading this from home, so I'm safe. Warn _your_ workmates though, okay?

      1. ratfox

        The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

        Actually, China has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where women suicide more often than men...

  6. Lotus 80
    Jobs Halo

    Seriously...

    ...not that big of a deal.

  7. Patrick R
    WTF?

    Quite good compared to France Telecom.

    24people/ 1.5 years / 180.000 employees. Do the maths, it's 5 times the ratio. I know, it's not funny.

  8. Hollerith 1

    If it's that great a company to work for...

    ... why is anyone committing suicide? Surely the rates should be lower than in the rest of the country if it's such a workers' paradise.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      They are...

      Suicide rates at Foxconn are still *much* lower than the Chinese national average...

  9. Steven Raith
    Thumb Up

    Kudos

    The headline, and subtitle, made for a bit of dark comedy fun for me.

    "Today in the news: Satan has returned to the earth and is taking all first born children and converting them to demons to rape their own parents.

    ....Film at 11."

    Yes, I'm going to hell for laughing.

    Steven R

  10. Antti Roppola

    Everyone's sweatshop

    While the pressure of dealing with high profile products may be a factor in the previous suicide, Foxconn is not just an Apple supplier. If you look at any nearly any mobo, you'll see the Foxconn components all over it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Agreed

      Yep. As well as Foxconn components being present in just about everything, where I work we've also been purchasing a fair amount of Foxconn branded products.

      To call them an "Apple supplier" is to massively understate how prolific they are.

      (Grammar Nazis - I spotted the split infinitive but decided to intentionally leave it in as a special treat for you. That one too.)

  11. Tony Paulazzo
    Linux

    Choices.

    >It may be close to slavery, but hey, what are YOU gonna do about it?<

    Ensure I don't buy the produce that company sells. I may only be a grain of sand (as was she), neither of us ever gonna change the tide, but I ain't ever gonna stop trying.

  12. lukewarmdog
    Badgers

    Well

    How cynical are we that we see this as a non-story? Those were real people with clearly quite shit lives working for a company building Western luxury items. Just because their employer clearly doesn't believe in duty of care shouldn't make us dismiss a real human tragedy. That person can now never own an iProduct. You are all very horrible human beings.

    1. LinkOfHyrule
      Coat

      Designed in California, made in hell!

      The people who make iPhones will probably never be able to afford one in their wildest dreams. Yet they all must know from all the publicity that it's one of the most sort after products in the whole world. It's kind of pathetic on so many levels.

      But hey, It's consumerism! Lets all go out and buy iPads and download apps that let us piss money up the wall on reading news you can get for free using the browser!

      To keep things neutral I should really say that its not just just apple stuff this applies too - apparently the mouse I'm using (Microsoft basic optical mouse) might of been made with child labour a according to a recent report!

      Mines the one made using child labour.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Misread title

    There was me thinking that it was Apple's local provider of schezuan beef. In which case, you've got to really ask yourself, is it beef?...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @ all who think it's statistically insignificant

    France Telecom tried to use the same argument. However, that "average of X suicides per 100K" covers the whole population, which includes those with mental health issues, or no job, or a variety of other personal issues which aren't always compatible with holding down a decent job.

    I wonder what the statistic would be like if you only considered those in reasonably good employment (whether Foxconn really qualifies as this is debatable, it would seem, but assembling hi-tech gadgets in long shifts would seem better than quite a few of the jobs knocking around in China).

    1. /\/\j17

      @@ all who...

      While statistical analysis of comparative suicide rates for employed vs unemployed people have been done in developed, western countries (e.g. Irish Republic 1996-2006) have been done and give around a 4-fold increase in RISK (not rate) it is not valid to apply these figures to a country with completely different social and economic conditions, like China (do you know what Chinese pay rates and unemployment benefits are - I don't).

      We have not real facts in this case bar - employed, female. Was she the CTO, a cleaner or a drone in sector 7G doing 14 hour shifts 6 days a week on the assembly line? While she was employed had she been subject to workplace harassment, official disciplinary process or told her job was up for redundancy that day? Was she some super-human with no mental health issues at all or did she have some underlying mental illness (communist countries in general have a poor record accepting and treating mental illness and probably not a barrier to employment)?

      In such a situation all you can (justifiably) do is a very high level statistical analysis based on the national rates as most commenters have done.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        @@@ all who...

        I completely agree, but that just highlights why the comparison should not be made. Lord knows the average working conditions in China aren't far up from "shabby" in a lot of the industries. In 2006, average wage was a smidge over $2K (not sure about cost of living, but you can apparently get a small apartment in Shanghai for around £60/mo, and I know everything else is very cheap compared to UK standards). Anecdotally, the unemployment benefits over there are not very good, either.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did they fall?.....

    ...or were they pushed? Even figuratively? Just asking...

  16. mhenriday

    Purloined, Rik ?

    «... a fate that makes the experience of Gizmodo's Jason Chen and his purloined iPhone 4G rather tame». I haven't seen any evidence presented to the effect that the telephone of which Jason Chen was briefly in possession before sending it back to Apple was purloined - the current story is that an Apple employee left it on a bar stool and never came back to claim it. Does Rik Myslewski know something the rest of us don't - or is this simply yet another example of sloppy Reg journalism ?...

    Henri

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like