Skip to Content

Foxconn employees asked to sign 'no suicide' pledge

by Chris Ward May 5th 2011 at 11:00AM

FoxconnEnglish tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail is reporting that employees working for Foxconn, assembler of many Apple products, are being forced to sign pledges not to commit suicide. The report from the tabloid paper points to an investigation conducted by the Centre for Research on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom). Sacom claims it uncovered "appalling" working conditions at the Foxconn factory that include excessive overtime and public humiliation.

While the Daily Mail cites the Sacom study as evidence of abysmal working conditions at Foxconn, the Sacom report investigates factory conditions across China -- not just Foxconn -- and, in fact, congratulates Foxconn as being the only employer to pledge to meet government limits on overtime.

The anti-suicide letters seem to have been first published on the Shangaiist website, where there's some discussion on the exact translation of the supposed leaked Foxconn employee letter. The contentious, final paragraph states:

"In the event of non-accidental injuries (including suicide, self mutilation, etc.), I agree that the company has acted properly in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, and will not sue the company, bring excessive demands, take drastic actions that would damage the company's reputation or cause trouble that would hurt normal operations."

But what Shangaiist author Elaine Chow translates as "will not sue the company," others translate as "will not make demands outside of law and regulation."

In fact, this anti-suicide pact that new workers are asked to sign seems to point them towards sources of help should they have problems, including a trade union hotline -- not quite the dismal picture painted by the Daily Mail.

[Via Slashdot]



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Apple

English tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail is reporting that employees working for Foxconn, assembler of many Apple products, are being...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

24 Comments

Filter by:
albo

Unenforceable, as far as we know... =O

May 05 2011 at 9:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gregory Pierce

I'm having a hard time figuring out how they will enforce this clause. After the person has killed themselves, its a bit moot what's in the clause.

May 05 2011 at 8:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alexander Muse

Suicidal people may not care about living, but they sure as hell honor contracts.

May 05 2011 at 7:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charli

Truly erroneous and hit foddering headline.

there's no pledge not to commit suicide. It is just an acknowledgement of a new agreement that if you hurt yourself (rather than an accident) the company doesn't and won't pay out any agreed insurance etc.

a number of sources have suggested that the real reason for the suicides was stress over not being able to earn enough money to send home to families etc. The death payouts (which included suicide) were apparently very large

May 05 2011 at 5:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
krye

So what happens if you turn around and kill yourself anyway? They sue you? Probably a way to deny the family the benefits they've had to pay out in the past.

May 05 2011 at 5:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to krye's comment
Charli

pretty much every death policy in the US excludes suicide

May 05 2011 at 5:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matt Jones

Can we moderate the Daily Mail as "troll" already? This is an OLD story from last year:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/foxconn-workers-told-to-sign-letters-promising-not-to-kill-self/story-e6frfro0-1225871726733

Further, as was pointed out THE LAST TIME this came up, "14 workers committed suicide in the last 16 months" sounds terrible - until you note that Foxconn employs 800,000+ workers. At the average suicide rate IN THE US (11.1/100k/yr), we'd expect to see roughly 88 suicides every 12 months in a population of that size...

May 05 2011 at 1:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pf0604

Nobody in the UK considers the Daily Mail to be a newspaper.

May 05 2011 at 1:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to pf0604's comment
Gregory Pierce

That's good, because nobody in the US does either.

May 05 2011 at 9:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Masseyis

The article is in the Daily Mail -- basically like Fox News, but with less rigour for factual accuracy and more alarmist. If yo can imagine it.

May 05 2011 at 1:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
generik777

Breaking the pledge is punishable by death.

May 05 2011 at 12:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nicnac

Why single out Apple in this article? Oh wait, I know why. So that it gets a rise out of both the haters and the fans.

Also "the Foxconn factory". They have ONE factory? Really?

Here is a partial list of Foxconn clients (Wikipedia):
Apple Inc., Acer Inc., Amazon.com, Asus, Intel, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Vizio

May 05 2011 at 12:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.