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After Suicides, Scrutiny of Chinas Grim FactoriesBy DAVID BARBOZA

Published: June 6, 2010

SHENZHEN, China The factorys first death this year came on Jan.

23.

The body of a 19-year-old workernamed Ma Xiangqian was found in

front of his high-rise dormitory at 4:30

a.m. Police investigators concluded

that he had leapt from a high floor,

and they ruled it a suicide.

His family, including his 22-year-old

sister who worked at the same

company, Foxconn Technology, said

he hated the job he had held only since

November an 11-hour overnight

shift, seven nights a week, forging plastic and metal into

electronics parts amid fumes and dust. Or at least that was

Mr. Mas job until, after a run-in with his supervisor, he wasdemoted in December to cleaning toilets.

Mr. Mas pay stub shows that he worked 286 hours in the

month before he died, including 112 hours of overtime,

about three times the legal limit. For all of that, even with

extra pay for overtime, he earned the equivalent of $1 an

hour.

The factory was always abusing my brother, the sister, Ma

Liqun, said tearfully last week.

Since Mr. Mas death, there have been 12 other suicides or

suicide attempts eight men and four women on two

Foxconn campuses in Shenzhen, where employees live and

work. The factories here, with about 400,000 employees,

make products for global companies like Apple, Dell and

Hewlett-Packard.

Most of the other suicide cases fit a similar profile: ages 18

to 24, relatively new to the factory, and falling from a campus building.

The rash of suicides has intensified scrutiny of the working and living conditions at

Foxconn, the worlds biggest contract electronics supplier. Responding to the clamor,

Foxconn has raised salaries steeply twice in the last five days. The company announced the

latest increase on Sunday, saying that after a three-month trial period, the basic salaries of

many of its workers in China could reach nearly $300 a month, more than double what

they were a few weeks ago.

Related

Foxconn Increases Size of Raise in

Chinese Factories (June 7, 2010)

Room for Debate: What Do Chinas

Workers Want?(June 13, 2010)

Health Guide: Suicide and Suicidal

Behavior

Times Topic: China

Enlarge This Image

Reuters

Ma Zishan and Ma Liqun, the father

and sister of a Foxconn worker who

killed himself in January, after being

demoted. The factory was always

abusing my brother, Ms. Ma said.

Enlarge This Image

Kin Cheung/Associated Press

The Foxconn sites in Shenzhen have a

reputation as grueling workplaces,

where tasks are timed with a

stopwatch.

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Page 1 of 4After Foxconn Suicides, Scrutiny for Chinese Plants - NYTimes.com

6/28/2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide.html?partner=rss&emc...


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Sociologists and other academics see the deaths as extreme

signals of a more pervasive trend: a generation of workers

rejecting the regimented hardships their predecessors

endured as the cheap labor army behind Chinas economic

miracle.

Rather than take their own lives, many more workers at

Foxconn tens of thousands more have simply quit. In

recent interviews here, employees said the typical Foxconn

hire lasted just a few months at the factory before leaving,

demoralized.

They complain about military-style drills, verbal abuse by

superiors and self-criticisms they are forced to read aloud,

as well as occasionally being pressured to work as many 13

consecutive days to complete a big customer order even

when it means sleeping on the factory floor.

Although the legal limit in China is 36 hours of overtime a

month, several workers interviewed here said they regularly

exceeded that by wide margins.

They leave so soon because they cant adjust to factory

life, said Wang Xueliu, a production team leader who has

worked at Foxconn for six years. He, too, plans to leave

soon, to join a new business with his brother making

candles for export.

Many other manufacturers in China also struggle with high

turnover.

Throughout southern China, the countrys industrial heartland, there is an acute labor

shortage, as the legions of rural migrants who formerly journeyed thousands of miles from

the interior provinces are now choosing other options. Many seek positions in the service

sector, or jobs closer to home.

Theres no doubt about it: they dont want to work on the assembly line, Jing Jun, a

sociologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says of the young migrant workers moving

into southern China. They have a different expectation. And once people s attitudes about

being in a factory change, other things will change.

Foxconn said it was trying to improve its employees working and living conditions. Still,

Louis Woo, a high-ranking Foxconn executive, acknowledged that much needed to be done

to improve the workplace and the management culture.

Maybe this spate of suicides will also serve us as a wake-up call, he said in an interview

last week. We realize we must do a better job.

Sociologists say Chinas new generation of migrant workers many of them born in the

1990s are better educated and more conscious of their rights. And their ambivalenceabout factory life coincides with a demographic shift that has resulted in a decline in the

number of young people entering the work force.

Economists say the changes are already eroding some of Chinas competitive advantages in

the global economy by raising wages, the cost of production and, soon, the prices of a wide

range of consumer goods that China exports.

The factory model has run into some serious limitations, says Huang Yasheng, a

professor of management at M.I.T. and the author of Capitalism With Chinese

Characteristics.

Now, they have to find a new model and move to a more innovative economy, Professor

Huang said. The problem, though, is that those kinds of companies don t create a lot of

Ma Xiangqian had told family that he

was miserable at work.

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opportunities for young, migrant workers.

Ma Xiangqian, who killed himself on Jan. 23, may have been an extreme case with his own

emotional frailties. But he may also stand as a symbol of what his generation of workers

are rebelling against.

Described by his father as quiet and determined to help alleviate his familys poverty, Mr.

Ma followed a path similar to the one that millions of other migrant workers, including his

three older sisters, had taken before him, traveling more than 800 miles from a poor

farming village in Henan Province a village now nearly devoid of young working-age

people to seek employment in Shenzhen, Chinas electronics manufacturing capital.

Foxconn, founded by the Taiwanese industrialist Terry Gou, is a $60 billion manufacturer

with a reputation for military -style efficiency that includes mapping out assembly line

workers movements in great detail and monitoring tasks with a stopwatch.

The company is also known for the scale of its operations.

Last week, its site here, covering about a square mile, was teeming with uniformed migrant

workers, filing into work at gray, low-slung factory complexes, or entering utilitarian high -

rise dormitories.

At Foxconn, Mr. Ma shared a dormitory room with nine other workers, ate in the campus

cafeteria and worked night shifts, 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. His sister said he did little but work and

sleep, had no friends on campus and did not even know the names of most of his

roommates.

For Mr. Ma, though, the problem was apparently not just the pace and length of work.

At the end of December, my brother called my parents and said he had a bad relationship

with his production team manager, said his sister, adding her brother said the manager

often cursed at him.

His family said the demotion to scrubbing toilets in December further demoralized him

about life at the factory complex where a shortage of warm water in the dorm often

meant cold showers, and where even simple pleasures like snacks were forbidden.

Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have already said they are looking into conditions at

Foxconn although Apples chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, said last week that he was

troubled by the suicides but that Foxconn was not a sweatshop.

Foxconn has also defended its operation, saying it treats workers with respect. But it also

says that it intends to address management weakness and the ills of some of its workers, by

adding counselors, hot lines and consulting monks.

But labor rights groups, including China Labor Watch, a human rights group based in New

York, say they have documented what they call the dehumanizing treatment of workers at

Foxconn. Mr. Mas sister quit shortly after her brothers death.

She is staying with her parents, who have temporarily moved from their province to a

dilapidated, one-room apartment here in Shenzhen to try to resolve the issues surroundingtheir sons death.

Some of the families of the other suicide victims have reportedly received settlements of as

much as $15,000 a factor that some sociologists say may have led to copycat suicides in

some cases by workers hoping to help their families.

Ma Xiangqians family had negotiated with the company over compensation, but Foxconn

declined to discuss the specifics of the case.

He was my only son, said Ma Xiangqians father, Ma Zishan, a struggling farmer of

landscape plants and trees grown for use in the bustling cities. Only sons are very

important in the countryside. What am I going to do?




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Bao Beibei contributed research.

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Past Coverage

Inquiry Into Deaths at Foxconn Will Be Released to Public, Chinese Official Says (June 13, 2010)After Suicides, Scrutiny of China's Grim Factories(June 7, 2010)

After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers' Salaries (June 3, 2010)

Deaths Shake A Titan In China (May 27, 2010)

A version of this article appeared in print on June 7, 2010, on page A1

of the New York edition.

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