[Tryphadz]

Another Foxconn employee dies in China
Posted: 25 May 2010 1048 hrs
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Foxconn


BEIJING : A 19-year-old employee of Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn died Tuesday after falling from a building at the company's plant in southern China -- the 10th such death this year, state media reported. The deaths, which are apparent suicides, have raised questions about the conditions for millions of factory workers in China, especially at Foxconn, where labour activists say long hours, low pay and high pressure are the norm.

But the group's founder Terry Gou on Monday denied that Foxconn's employees were being worked too hard and driven to kill themselves, saying he was not running "blood and sweat factories". Foxconn, known in Taiwan by the name of its parent Hon Hai Precision, is the world's largest maker of computer components. It also makes iPhones for Apple.

China's state Xinhua news agency said it was not immediately known whether the latest Foxconn fatality -- the second in less than a week -- was a man or a woman. It was the ninth death at Foxconn's Shenzhen facilities this year. Another company employee died at a plant in northern China in January, according to state media reports. Two more have suffered serious injuries in similar falls.

Officials at Foxconn -- whose clients include Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard -- did not have an immediate comment on the report. Gou said Monday he was "confident things will become stabilised soon." The company employs 800,000 people worldwide, with more than 300,000 in Shenzhen, a special economic zone on the border with Hong Kong.

In July, a Foxconn worker committed suicide when the company held an inquiry into the disappearance of an iPhone prototype, for which the employee had been considered responsible. Foxconn has hired Buddhist monks and psychological counselors for its workers in China. - AFP/jy