300 Foxconn Workers Threaten Mass Suicide Over Raise

[jurassic1024]

[citation][nom]wiyosaya[/nom]Seems like I should avoid buying Foxconn products or products from companies that use foxconn as their manufacturer.[/citation]


That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard. You have no idea how important Foxconn is... at all. Your statement proves this.

 

[rawful]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]There are those who don't care except for the price and quality of the products. The labor, environment and ability to follow the law be dammed.And I know quite a few people. Including family members.[/citation]

Put those people into the factory then, see how fast their tune changes.

 

[kooltime]

So its going to be called

XBOX "DEAD" or will XBOX "LIVE" still apply after this ???

 

[zakaron]

I guess this puts a new perspective on the 360's "RRoD"...

Okay, perhaps that was a bit crude, but I do feel bad for those that must resort to something like this just to get by in this world. Sounds like a crap deal these workers were handed.

 

[kinggraves]

Someone should really start locking the roof.

 

[nebun]

wow...this is why we need to start building stuff in the USA, not some other country where people kill themselves because they did not get paid....wait I am going to kill myself because I feel stupid....what's up with these people?

 

[richboyliang]

be thankful they ain't kids, although i do believe some countries still have child workers. a century ago America had child labor and horrible working conditions, and if someone wanted reform they'd fire him since there were loads more fighting for that job

 

[blurr91]

I blame American consumers for this. If only we are willing to pay $800 for Xbox 360 and $1500 for iPad 2, then we could build them right here in the USA. Those unhappy Chinese workers could go back to their collective farms doing what they really loved, subsistance farming.

Trade is an awful thing. It utilizes comparative advantages to maximize output and better lives. It's the ultimate form of "spread the wealth."

If only we could go back to the good ol' days when each of us raised our own food and made our own clothes... There would be no bankers, no lawyers, no doctors, no politicians, no machinists, no mechanics...just farmers. Then we would have attained true utopia.

/sarcasm (for those of you who are sarcastically impaired)

 

[wrxchris]

[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]If you have 900,000 employees all sorts of unpleasant things will happen and if you publish a 'report' on those selected incidents you can make a company look worse than they may be.This is not to say that the working conditions in 3rd world countries are often well below our 'current' standards !But think about what we did 100 years ago (kids working in mines) or even as little as 50 years ago.Unthinkable today for us. These countries are simply going thru the same motions that we did.We should not forget that we had 'separate bathrooms' as recent as the 1960s... i.e. the "Jim Crow laws" ![/citation]

But you must not ignore the fact that we, as Americans, are the ones demanding these products. Historically we exploited slaves to obtain resources that we were too lazy to work for. When we lost that avenue, we had to exploit our own through child labor as you mentioned. That didn't go over so well, externalities felt so close to home can quickly break a pure capitalist system. Everyone knows that greedy office-working Americans are incapable of producing anything other than bullshit, so someone got the great idea to move the production overseas and exploit people so far away that the negative externalities can be swept under the rug out of view of the masses. In conclusion, rather than citing historical atrocities as reason to justify modern atrocities, you must look deeper into it and ask WHY those atrocities were committed in the first place, and HOW can we avoid them now and going into the future.

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]Magikherbs[/nom]Untill the consumer demands it, working conditions will never improve. Targeted boycotts will help to accomplish this.pEACe[/citation]

Nonsense

It's not the consumer's job. It's the employees job, and his/her government.

 

[darkavenger123]

[citation][nom]wiyosaya[/nom]Seems like I should avoid buying Foxconn products or products from companies that use foxconn as their manufacturer.[/citation]
Unless you don't buy Dell, HP, MS, SONY, Apple and just about everyone else...that's not gonna happen.

 

[darkavenger123]

[citation][nom]Realbeast[/nom]The hard part is finding a couple guys that will jump to show them you're serious.[/citation]
Can always kick the front line guys off the building.........(j/k ok)....

 

[kronos_cornelius]

The way I see it, its is their own fault that they are being exploited. They could organize and bring democracy or whatever they want to call it to their province. Ghanddy did it with the British, the Americans did it with the British, the Egyptians just did it last year. In the end, if they don't help themselves, nobody will.

Suicide is not a good tool for social change. the Japanese did it in WWII against the Americans... it did not turn out well for the Japanese fighters or their war. The jijadist have done that in Israel and in the US, but their message dies with them, and the people go back to worrying about raising their family. Most importantly, if you threaten to kill yourself over something, some people will think you are crazy and others will think (rightly) you are an extremist and will be happy once you follow through.

The best solution for them is passive protests, fasting, and to bring more press to call attention to their problem. Also, hundreds of thousand protesters is more powerful than 300 suicides.

I don't buy/use Microsoft or Apple but that is because they treat innovation the same way they treat the Chinese Foxconn workers.

As replacements, I recommend Ubuntu Linux, and Google. For hardware, it is indeed impossible to buy something and not be a client to Foxconn

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]kronos_cornelius[/nom]The way I see it, its is their own fault that they are being exploited. They could organize and bring democracy or whatever they want to call it to their province.[/citation]
Yeah, because it's SO EASY to topple a one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. Not like they have a history of massacring protesters or anything. Go look up Tiananmen Square, circa 1989 and say that again.

Ghanddy did it with the British

1. Gandhi
2. It took decades of effort on behalf of the whole damn country, much of which was very painful for all involved.

In the end, if they don't help themselves, nobody will.

So, until these people man up and start a war, we should just exploit them all we want? That's one hell of a rationalization.

Suicide is not a good tool for social change. the Japanese did it in WWII against the Americans... it did not turn out well for the Japanese fighters or their war.

Wait, what? You're saying kamikaze pilots did it for social change? The hell have you been smoking?

The jijadist have done that in Israel and in the US, but their message dies with them, and the people go back to worrying about raising their family.

Again, wtf is with these idiotic comparisons?

The best solution for them is passive protests, fasting, and to bring more press to call attention to their problem.

Oh, it's so nice of you to have found the recipe to destabilize the most powerful and corrupt communist government on the planet, and painlessly too! Could you possibly oversimplify this any more?

Your opinions are offensively stupid.

 

[dalethepcman]

I know its kind of evil, but I really want to make a lemings clone called "FoxyCon" The goal is to have the workers try to escape the factory and jump off the roof to freedom.

 

[magikherbs]

Nonsense

It's not the consumer's job. It's the employees job, and his/her government.

The world's CEOs don't give a damn about the workers. The do care about profits and if no one buys in ... Get the picture ?

It is our responsibility to have ethical buying habits. The lack there of, is exactly why the world is in the mess that its in. For too long the west has become disgustingly fat off the slavery going on in Asia and elsewhere. Those days are numbered..

pEACe

 

[Guest]

Actually, a lot of you people are dumb. Parts that require mostly automation for manufacturing would be cheaper to produce here, because of shipping costs. (Shipping materials to China, shipping manufactured parts back)

It's just a total waste. It hurts us, it hurts their people.

 

[xerroz]

GOD DAM IT! Why didn't this happen in the Apple plant?! It would've been so MUCH juicer

 

[Pyree]

Actually, a lot of you people are dumb. Parts that require mostly automation for manufacturing would be cheaper to produce here, because of shipping costs. (Shipping materials to China, shipping manufactured parts back)

It's just a total waste. It hurts us, it hurts their people.

The thing is that even automation still require manual input. Some of the workers there just keep on pushing the same bottom for the machine to work (in case automation went wrong and jam the production line).

 

[spasmolytic46]

[citation][nom]dalethepcman[/nom]I know its kind of evil, but I really want to make a lemings clone called "FoxyCon" The goal is to have the workers try to escape the factory and jump off the roof to freedom.[/citation]

Done correctly, it could be very effective in combating the exploitation.

 

[alxianthelast]

honest to god my first reaction was who gives a damn if Xbox 360 production was halted even for a day.

then my second was don't they understand they'll have more to do when Apple's TV assembly work really ramps up.. as well as how replaceable they are and stunts like this will only get management moving to replace them with robots even faster.

and then, Foxconn will be working on Xbox 3 only too shortly if Microsoft expects to remain competive (by building that user base quickly enough to slide it in beneath the out going Xbox 360 in the next coming couple of years.

While the argument that these are human beings being exploited on the edge of slavery, since no one is forcing them to work at Foxconn and they need to involve the entire labor force if they want to properly action a work stoppage.. Such misery foxconn.. makes me wonder if they'll manage a straight month out of the news this year.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Vigilante212[/nom]I see all you people complaining about companies not caring about working conditions overseas, but you fail to realize that if they did not use cheap labor the costs of your oh so needed electronics would go up. Then you would just complain that prices were too high.[/citation]

go up by how much, the problem is the only numbers that we actually got from companies say 4-8 times the current cost, well like to have happen is an outside research company actually figure out what the actual cost would be to manufacture inside of the United States. Because I'm assuming minimum wage workers most of it robots could actually take over for another half of it in a few skilled workers wouldnt add that much to the bottom line.

 

[tlmck]

Good old Foxconn. Slogan: Quality ain't us.

 

[ilya80]

[citation][nom]willard[/nom]The consumer is the reason this is done, the companies are only giving us what we demand. [/citation]

This is bullshit.

Maximizing profits is the reason this is done.

Only thing about consumers that companies care about is that they dont choose their competition over them.

 

[rawful]

Easy way to fix this whole scenario is to place enormous tariffs on any goods coming from countries using exploitative labor practices. Then suddenly they will be cheaper to produce here... and once again, they can't just raise the price by 4-8 times. Nobody would buy it, and so they wouldn't make any money. This is not a necessary evil. I won't cry if Dell, Microsoft, or Apple go under because of this. It won't make me sad if I can't get unnecessary electronic toys for $200-300 anymore.