Foxconn's Apple team works another employee to death

[Marios]

jumpin' jack flash

[knopflerbruce]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hd7803hSxA

Maybe it's possible to look at it from a different perspective... if we don't buy the (cheap) products, do these workers get better lives? Working in a factory like that is a choice you make. If the conditions are as bad as it looks, then maybe these people don't have any other options? So by going like "don't buy their stuff" etc you only make it worse. Or do I miss something fundamental here?

...but I'll give Gigabyte some for taking REALLY good care of their employees, at least the ones that work on that UD9 By looking at the price they must get free champagne and caviar for lunch, and god knows what else...

[Xoulz]

in a society where money means security, through one mannerism or another, what else are you supposed to do?

right... thus the topic! (ie: suicide)

[Gautam]

...but I'll give Gigabyte some for taking REALLY good care of their employees, at least the ones that work on that UD9 By looking at the price they must get free champagne and caviar for lunch, and god knows what else...

[topaimz]

Gives fuel to the fire that is my hatred for Apple.

I have a illogical hatred for Apple and it's products, and now, I have more reasons to justify my illogical hatred

Hypocritically, I benefited from buying Apple stock @ Q1 2007 and selling it @ Q2 2008.
(Just because you hate someone or something, doesn't mean you can benefit from it )

[Serra]

I think a lot of people are unfairly blaming Foxconn or asian society in general.

I attended what was, when I was there, the highschool with the highest suicide rate in Canada when I was younger. The first suicide had nothing to do with the school, but it depressed a lot of people. Not long after the first victims death his friend committed suicide, then that persons brother, and so on. It was a frightening domino effect, taking people who you would never have expected. The same thing is going on there now, and I feel sorry for them. Morale is quite low, and almost everyone there surely knows at least one or more of the people who have committed suicide.

I'm not saying that Foxconn is blameless or anything (I really know little of the matter to comment on that), but this exact kind of thing can definitely happen anywhere even without the place of congregation necessarily doing anything wrong.

[Marios]

There is something wrong when companies do business with countries that treat their workers too bad.

[NKrader]

There is something wrong when companies do business with countries that treat their workers too bad.

they could make the hardware in the us and pay a union employee 16$ an hour to do it. then your precious computer hardware would cost ridiculous amounts of money..

you think 600$ is bad for an sr-2?? wait till every mobo costs that much cuz everyone gets treated "fair" this is the real world. not candyland.. some places suck.

I dont know about you but I would love to spend 500$ on a 120gb ipod... cuz it was made "the right way"

[saaya]

I dont know about you but I would love to spend 500$ on a 120gb ipod... cuz it was made "the right way"

same here...

there should be a seal or certification that shows the employees were AT least treated according to the minimum health and safety regulations etc...

id def look for it and but products with that logo, even if it would cost a lot more... id rather have no fancy mp3 player at all than one that helped a multi billion dollar company get even richer and knowing that it was only cheap cause it hurt the health of a few people working on it and then some more suffering from the factories impact on the local environment... its an inconvenient thought but theres basically blood on everything thats made in third world countries... not in the sense that somebody died directly from this product, but its slowly killing the people working in those factories...

[tajoh111]

As I have said in the otherthread, foxconn is at fault to an extent but it's trapped by being a chinese company with certain expectations by certain customers. That being a rich American company wants to buy for as low as they can and ironically sell for as expensive as they can get away with. What comes into anyone mind is the apple business model. Apples profit margins are too high and china the only country out there that can meet the bottom price that apple is willing to pay. Foxconn has 800,000 workers in china, 400,000 in the Apple plant. They make 1.75 billion dollars in net profit from 61 billion in revenue, that nothing really for a company of that size. Lets looks at apple, 35,000 employee's and 8 billion dollar net profit from 40 billion in revenue. Apple makes too much money because they pay low and sell high. The only way foxconn going to be able to increase employee conditions on a plant that size is companies like apple have to take a hit in their margins and be willing to pay more for their product. Even if Foxxconn paid all their remaining net revenue to employee's they still be making only about an extra 2200 us dollars per year, which still a huge amount of money for them, is really nothing that exciting to get them out of the third world/second world.

Motherboard makers margins are not close to apples margins. Look at asus for example margins, 500 million dollars from 21 billion in sales. Dell and HP margins are crap compared to Apple. As far as game consoles come, PS3 and xbox 360 break even for what they sell it for or they make a slight profit, Nintendo does make money but its nothing like apples.

Its disgusting on how much apple charges and how much they actually pay to make their products. Its one of the reasons I cannot be a fan of their products.

When you take into account number of employee(less employee equals more efficiently run) and revenue compared to net profit, Apple soundly beats any tech company(besides maybe google), which is probably why they are the most valuable tech company in the world.

[Kallenator]

they could make the hardware in the us and pay a union employee 16$ an hour to do it. then your precious computer hardware would cost ridiculous amounts of money..

And how many hours would an individual use on every, let's say motherboard?
Inserting sockets of different sorts, attaching heat sinks, testing, packing.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1722&page=1

Looking at this place's efficiency shows that they are able to make 800.000 motherboards + 400.000 graphicards per month!
That is VERY little time per product.