Foxconn stages anti-suicide rallies

Also announces plans to increase its workforce in China to 1 million employees

Click for more photos. AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Thousands of workers at Foxconn's giant Shenzhen industrial park turned out Wednesday for what the company billed as a "Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future" motivational event, but which the Western press quickly characterized as an anti-suicide rally.

Foxconn, a publicly traded subsidiary of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is the world's largest manufacturer of electronic components. Its compound in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen employs more than 300,000 workers and assembles -- at great speed and amid high security -- a wide variety of high-tech gadgets, from computers for Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) to iPods, iPads and iPhones for Apple (AAPL).

Over the past two years, the company has been hit with outbreaks of labor unrest, complaints of excessive overtime and a series of high-profile worker suicides -- 12 so far this year. The company has pledged to improve wages and working conditions and has installed safety nets on its balconied dormitories to discourage suicide leaps.

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Posted in: Apple, Dell, Foxconn, Hon Hai, HP, Suicides

• Foxconn's 11th: Death by exhaustion

  An advocacy group claims the factory's latest workplace casualty followed a 34-hour shift

  Hong Kong-based SACOM (Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) has added fresh details to another death -- the 11th this year -- among the 420,000 workers at Foxconn's massive factory complex in Shenzhen, China.

  As we reported earlier this week (see Foxconn needs a better trade union), the family of the latest victim claims that this death came not MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 4, 2010 1:54 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Foxconn, SACOM, Steve Jobs, Suicides, Terry Gou

• Foxconn needs a better trade union

  Jumping off a balcony is not a good way to negotiate a 33% raise

  Foxconn, the world's largest manufacturer of electronics and computer components, made headlines Wednesday with the announcement that it is raising the monthly wages of some of the 420,000 workers at its massive facilities in Shenzhen, China, from 900 renminbi ($132) to 1,200 renminbi ($176).

  The Taiwanese company was under intense pressure from the U.S. companies that depend on MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 3, 2010 8:16 AM ET
  Posted in: All Things D, Apple, Foxconn, Steve Jobs, Suicides, Trade Unions

• Steve Jobs on Foxconn suicides

  Apple's CEO personally promises action in a bizarre e-mail exchange with a customer

  Adding his own voice to Apple's public statement on the matter, Steve Jobs has addressed the sensitive issue of worker suicides at Foxconn's Shenzhen factories in an e-mail exchange with a customer.

  The electronic conversation was reported Tuesday in MacStories.net. A reader named Jay Yerex had sent Jobs a chain e-mail from LabourStart -- the online newsletter of the MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 1, 2010 4:00 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Foxconn, Steve Jobs, Suicides