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.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it would boost equipment capital expenditure by up to 16 percent for this year to cope with strong customer demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Aside from AI, a growing demand for semiconductors used in the automotive and industrial sectors is to drive ASE’s capacity next year, the Kaohsiung-based company said. “We do see the disparity between AI and other general sectors, and that pretty much aligns the scenario in the first half of this year,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told an
RSS