A 21-year-old employee of technology giant Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) jumped to his death in southern China, reports said yesterday, the latest in a string of deaths involving its workers.
Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) in Taiwan, is the world’s largest maker of computer components and assembles products for Apple, including the iPhone, Sony and Nokia. The company is in the spotlight after suicides and labor unrest at its massive Chinese plants.
At least 13 employees died in apparent suicides last year, which activists blamed on tough working conditions and led to calls for better treatment of staff.
The latest death was of a man who only started work at the company’s sprawling plant in Shenzhen on June 27. He died on Tuesday, according to the Hong Kong Economic Times, which quoted a Foxconn official.
Police are investigating the fatal incident, the report said.
The company, meanwhile, has tried to contain the damage from the suspected suicide attempt by contending that the employee’s fall was not a result of work pressure.
Foxconn vice president Terry Cheng (程天縱) attributed the death to a possible accident, saying that the employee had only worked two hours of overtime since he joined the company.
“Based on my preliminary understanding, the employee was not a member of staff on the production line, but he worked in our research department,” Cheng told reporters in Taipei on Tuesday. “The employee was still on a training program and he had worked overtime for only two hours during the past 20 days, so we think that work pressure is irrelevant.”
He said that “prior to the accident, the employee had dined with 20 to 30 colleagues and they were likely drunk.”
Suicides have brought to light the high-pressure conditions in Hon Hai’s Chinese factories and they have tarnished the company’s reputation — forcing it to reconsider its management policies and increase wages substantially.
The company employs about 1 million people in China, about half of them based at its main facility in the southern industrial boomtown of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.
The firm in March reported a net loss of US$218.3 million last year on revenue of US$6.63 billion — about 8 percent lower than in 2009 — adding to mounting woes at the Taipei-based firm over the past few years.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS