Last July, a Foxconn employee committed suicided after reportedly losing one of the 16 iPhone prototypes he was responsible for. Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, and churns out many of Apple’s more popular products along with a number of other well-known devices such as the Nintendo Wii and Amazon’s Kindle.
Now comes a report via Business Week that a 24-year old female Foxconn employee recently jumped from her apartment building to her death, marking the 6th time in the last year that a Foxconn employee has committed suicide.
The 24-year-old assembly line worker, was from Henan province in eastern central China and had been working at the Shenzhen factory since August, the Taipei-based company, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, said in an e-mailed statement today. Local police are investigating the death, it said.
The worker, identified only by the surname Zhu, was on holiday, according to the statement. Hon Hai learned from local police that the suicide was related to personal matters, it said.
Personal matters? I suppose, but 6 suicides in less than a year seems more than a little shady.
May 12th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
But, it’s 6 suicides among 300,000 workers in one year. In a country that has a reported suicide rate of 230 per million (or 69 among 300,000 people). There is still a potential for something shady. But, I doubt it’s the story that people are looking for.