Buy an iPad, Kill a Chinese Worker

Got to love capitalism.  Start a company to make slightly superior products, sold at a 4 fold mark-up through branding and some slick but relatively inconsequential gizmos, and create a production chain based in China which literally works people to suicide, and make gazillions of dollars in the process.


What did it profit Steve Jobs to gain the world but stain his soul with such perfidy?




[The Associated Press

BEIJING —
A Foxconn Technology Group employee jumped to his death Wednesday from a company-rented apartment building in southwest China's Sichuan province, local police said.

At least a dozen Foxconn employees have jumped to their deaths or tried to do so since 2010, casting spotlight on the world's largest contract maker of electronics. The Taiwan-based company has been besieged with reports of poor working and living conditions for its workers at factories and dorms. The company installed nets in 2010 to prevent such deaths after the spate of suicides.

A public security bureau in Chengdu city announced the death Wednesday on the Sina Weibo microblogging site. The post identifies the employee only by the surname Xie and says the cause remains under investigation.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the man was 23.

In February, Foxconn — which employs about 1 million workers at its massive plants in China — said it had raised wages by up to 25 percent and that it was taking measures to limit workers' total work hours.

The plants that turn out iPhones, iPads, Xbox video game consoles, Dell and Hewlett-Packard computers, are run with military-like discipline.]

http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/top-news/foxconn-employee-jumps-to-death-in-southwest-china/nPT5Y/

Damnit, Dad just bought me a refurbished Dell.

[TAIPEI (Reuters) - Foxconn Technology Group, the main supplier of Apple Inc , said on Thursday a worker at a Chinese plant jumped from his apartment on Wednesday, the first suicide since the company agreed with its U.S. client to improve work conditions.
The 23 year-old worker fell to his death from his apartment located outside the plant in the southwestern city of Chengdu, according to a statement by Foxconn. The worker had joined the company last month and police were investigating the death.

Apple and Foxconn reached an agreement in March to improve conditions for the 1.2 million workers assembling iPhones and iPads, a landmark decision that could change the way Western companies do business in China.

According to the agreement, Foxconn would hire tens of thousands of new workers to reduce overtime work, improve safety protocols and upgrade housing and other amenities.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14/foxconn-suicide_n_1596138.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=061412&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief