Apple management who have been embarrassed by the suicide of an employee at Chinese Company Foxconn where Apple products are made, have flown executives to China, to discuss workplace conditions claim insiders at Foxconn.
Apple management who have been embarrassed by the suicide of an employee at Chinese Company Foxconn where Apple products are made, have flown executives to China, to discuss workplace conditions claim insiders at Foxconn.
We are also told that several groups in the USA are set to lobby Apple to axe Foxconn from their list of OEM manufactuers.
The Company who this week started handing out payments and gifts to the family of the employee Sun Danyong, who jumped from a 12 floor balcony after being accused of stealing an iPhone, is now concerned that they could lose future Apple work.
The Company that in the past has forced employees to stand for 12 hours a day making Apple products has a terrible workplace record according to China’s Labour Watch who lambasted Foxconn’s “inhumane and militant management system, which lacks fundamental respect for workers’ rights”.
The Labour Watch Group claim that Foxconn has according to the UK Inquirer has in the past engaged in “serious labour violations including excessive working hours, unpaid wages for up to 30 minutes of work each day, compulsory overtime and extremely poor dormitory conditions”.
Currently the Company is preparing to manufacture thousands of new Apple “touch” tablet PC’s.
Earlier this week Foxconn paid US$44,000 to the family of a Chinese factory worker who apparently committed suicide after being interrogated by one of the Apple contractor’s employees.
In addition the girlfriend of Sun Danyong has been given a free Apple Mac. She was the last person that Sun Danyong spoke to prior to falling to his death.
Despite this Foxconn’s general manager of China operations, James Lee, defended the company’s working conditions and continued to attack Sun’s credibility.
According to the UK Inquirer Lee said “Several times he had some products missing, and then we got them back,” Lee intimated. “We don’t know who took the product, but it was at his stop.”
No evidence has been found to indicate that Sun was involved in any theft said an executive at the Company.
Family and friends claim that Sun told them he was beaten and humiliated by his superiors while being interrogated over the missing phone, something that Foxconn has denied.
In an interview with the New York Times, Sun’s brother, Sun Danxiong, 28, said Foxconn paid his family $44,000 compensation and gave Sun’s girlfriend a free Apple laptop computer.
Foxconn has suspended one of its security staff members over the incident pending a police investigation.
