Friday, May 6, 2011

Foxconn Employees Forced To Sign ‘No Suicide’ Pledge: Report

Foxconn Employees Forced To Sign ‘No Suicide’ Pledge: Report


















Employees at the Foxconn facilities in China are forced to sign a pledge, promising that they will not commit suicide. The new mandate comes after more than a dozen staff members killed themselves over a 16 month period.
wireduk
This latest revelation comes from a new report that looks into the notoriously grim working conditions of the gadget manufacturing plant. Foxconn is hired by companies like Apple, HP, Nokia and Dell, to build their fleets of laptops, smartphones and tablets. The firm has a reputation for depressed workers and suicides, with some plants even putting up “anti-suicide” nets to catch employees who throw themselves off buildings, or bringing in monks to exorcise evil spirits. The plant’s managers and companies like Apple have promised to improve conditions and wages.
“It is very troubling,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, when asked in June 2010 about the numerous suicides. “Apple does one of the best jobs of any company understanding the working conditions of our supply chain. We are all over this.”
Labor group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) went to the facility and interviewed more than a hundred employees in March and April 2011, to survey the current working conditions. The report found staff working overtime that exceeded the legal limit, endless back-to-back shifts and dormitories that feel like prison blocks.
Labor laws in China dictate that overtime should not exceed 36 hours per month. The report says that workers are usually subjected to 50 to 80 hours of overtime a month. In the Chengdu facility — where Foxconn employees put together the iPad — staff could expect a grueling 80 to 100 hours of overtime, on top of the 174 regular work hours.
Staff members interviewed said that working overtime was voluntary, but making up the extra hours was necessary to earn a regular salary.
A typical day for a worker at Chengdu consists of waking up at 6:45 AM for a 7:40 AM start at work assembly, before working all day until 8:00 PM. Staff are often bullied into moving directly from regular work into overtime hours without a break, and are often punished if they don’t.
Staff members — who aren’t allowed to talk, carry a mobile phone or even sit down — are not just punished if they mess up: they’re humiliated. “If they made [a] mistake, they had to write a confession letter and hand it to the supervisor,” the report says. “If the mistake is serious, the worker has to read the confession letter in front of his other colleagues.”
A spokesperson for the firm, Louis Woo, admitted to the Daily Mail that conditions can be rough. When asked about the humiliation of workers, Woo said, “It is not something we endorse or encourage. However, I would not exclude that this might happen given the diverse and large population of our workforce. But we are working to change it.”
SACOM has demanded that Foxconn and the technology companies that hire the plant change their policies. For the employees, though, they just want to be able to talk, to hold a normal social life or, in some cases, get their hands on the gadgets they make.”
“Though we produce for iPhone, I haven’t got a chance to use iPhone,” a worker from Guanlan said. “I believe it is fascinating and has lots of function. However I don’t think I can own one by myself.” A luxury gadget like that would cost a Foxconn employee around two months salary.
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