[welihiedginly]

20:46 GMT, 14 June 2012

Another worker at Apple supplier Foxconn leapt to his death yesterday, the first apparent suicide
since the company agreed with its U.S. client to improve workers' conditions. The 23-year-old worker
jumped from his apartment outside the massive Foxconn plant in the south-western city of Chengdu,
according to a statement from the company.

It is just the latest suicide by a worker at the Chinese electronics giant, which employs 1.2million people
and supplies many of the biggest names in consumer gadgets.



Apple and Foxconn reached an agreement just months ago to improve conditions for the workers
assembling iPhones and iPads after the spate of suicides led to global condemnation.

According to the agreement, Foxconn would hire tens of thousands of new workers to reduce overtime,
improve health and safety protocols and upgrade housing and other amenities.

The move came after Apple agreed to an investigation by the independent Fair Labor Association earlier
this year to stem criticism that its products were built in sweatshop-like conditions.



That investigation found 'significant' problems at Foxconn's plants.

Employees can work 76-hour weeks and for 11 days in a row, yet are paid as little as £150 a month.

That's around three-quarters the country's average wage, but Less Than Half The Price Of An iPads
They Make.

The New York Times claimed in a recent report that some workers making iPads and iPhones said they
stand so long their legs swell until they can hardly walk.

Questions about working conditions at Foxconn first emerged in 2010, when 18 workers threw
themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths.

Following the aftermath, the company installed safety nets and in some of its factories, hired counsellors
to help employees.

Earlier this month About 1,000 workers from the same Chengdu plant, which employs 120,000 people,
went aon the rampage earlier after a dispute in a company restaurant turned violent.



Apple CEO Tim Cook has vowed to work to improve conditions at the plants, where 90 per cent of the
technology firm's products are made, including reducing overtime, which the report found some workers
were not paid for.

'We want everyone to know what we are doing, and we hope that people copy. We've put a ton of effort
into taking overtime down,' Mr Cook said in May.

The announcement was seen as a landmark decision that would change the way Western companies would
deal with Chinese firms.


REALLY?