iPhone factory asks staff to sign anti-suicide vow

APPLE manufacturer Foxconn has reportedly urged its workers in southern China to promise in writing not to kill themselves as it battles to stem a spate of factory suicides.

Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company Hon Hai Precision, apologised for the suicides after flying into the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen aboard his private jet for a hastily arranged media tour.

“I give my apologies for the impact this has had on society,” Gou said, adding: “I will try all I can do to save lives.”

But he defended the company’s labour practices and speculated that some of the suicides may have been linked to personal or relationship problems.

Foxconn employees must now agree to go to psychiatric institutions for their own protection if their mental health turns “abnormal”, according to reports.

And the company was said to be hanging safety nets around buildings at its vast factory in Shenzhen after a 19-year-old worker fell to his death on Tuesday.

The death was the ninth apparent suicide at the huge site this year.

Apple, which is preparing to launch its iPad computer tablet in countries outside the US tomorrow, said it was evaluating Foxconn’s efforts to prevent further deaths.

“Apple is deeply committed to ensuring that conditions throughout our supply chain are safe and workers are treated with respect and dignity,” a spokeswoman said.

Apple refused to confirm if the new iPad was being made at the plant, which does assemble the top-selling iPhone.

Ahead of the stage-managed media tour of the Shenzhen site, the parents and sister of Mai Xiang Quian, who committed suicide in January, wept and knelt on the ground at the gates, the father’s tears dripping on a picture of his son.

Behind them were signs displaying the fruits of the workers’ labour – Hewlett-Packard computer screens, Sony televisions and Nokia handsets.

Inside, journalists were herded around a huge city-within-a-city, which employs a staggering 300,000 people.

Officials said that workers were treated well with only between four and eight people sharing plush dorm rooms. The tree-lined site boasts banks, bakeries, a 24-hour market, gurgling fountains and even an acupuncturist.

Foxconn official Louis Woo, one of the tour leaders, said the company was starting a 24-hour helpline and planned to divide workers into groups of under 50, to counter isolation.

“The number one priority has to be to try to stop this spate of suicides,” Woo told AFP.

Part of the problem, he said, is that a “pretty high number” of employees are aged from 18 to 24 – the prime age for suicides. And many are far away from their homes in remote parts of China for the first time.

The Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing was working with the company and local authorities to implement “effective measures” against more suicides.

“We are deeply sorry for the Foxconn employees who jumped to their death,” a spokesman at the office, Yang Yi, told a news conference.

But beyond the factory gates, workers told of long hours, harsh supervisors and low pay. A 22-year-old female employee told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post: “I feel like I have an empty life and work like a machine.”

Among extraordinary steps taken by Foxconn, Taiwan’s CTI cable TV channel said the company was demanding staff sign a letter promising not to take their own lives.

Roof patrols are also being arranged and nets installed around buildings to deter suicidal workers, the channel said.

China’s Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper published a photograph of a memo with a Foxconn letterhead that it said all employees were being asked to sign.

“I promise never to hurt myself or others in an extreme manner,” said a section of the memo.

It also asked employees to allow the company to send them to a medical institution if they appeared to be in an “abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others”.

One Foxconn worker told the newspaper he had refused to sign because the company was seeking the right to institutionalise employees. “If I bicker with my supervisor, will I be sent to a mental hospital?”

But there is no shortage of people trying to get through the Shenzhen gates. The company says around 8,000 people apply to work at the factory every day.