Foxconn, a subsidiary of Taiwanese electronics giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is in the spotlight this week for all the wrong reasons after a spate of suicides this year at one of its manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, China.
The deaths of 10 workers at the plant, with another death reported at a Foxconn plant in Hebei Province, has brought the company so much unwanted attention that the normally shy Hon Hai chairman, Terry Gou (郭台銘), was forced into conducting a press tour of the huge plant on Wednesday in a bid to rebut accusations of labor-camp-style employment conditions for the plant’s 250,000 workers.
In fitting with the plant’s location in China, the tour apparently resembled a communist-style organized propaganda tour, with workers lining up to tell the visiting reporters that life inside the walled complex was not as bad as media reports had made out and that the deaths were probably the result of personal problems.
Outside of the site, however, several workers gave another side of the story, backing up the claims of labor groups that working conditions and pay are far from ideal.
Embarrassingly for Gou, another worker jumped to his death just hours after the tycoon had assured the throngs of reporters that the company was doing all it could to prevent any further tragedies.
Being on the defensive is a whole new experience for someone like Gou, who back home in Taiwan is attributed almost godlike status thanks to the success of his electronics manufacturing empire.
For years, industrialists like Gou and before him Formosa Plastics founder Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) — both successful products of Taiwan’s economic miracle — have been blindly revered by the media and the majority of the population for their success, their business acumen and their management skills, but above all for the enormous amounts of wealth they have accumulated.
Little attention was ever paid to the side effects of such phenomenal wealth creation, such as the workhouse labor conditions suffered by employees, the damage to the health of workers and nearby residents that dangerous substances can cause, the environmental legacy being created by the millions of tonnes of carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere each year and the destruction of flora and fauna.
That is gradually changing, with more attention being brought to the environmental and social costs of the consumer society we live in.
Formosa Plastics Corp was recently in the news after being handed the “Black Planet” award by a German-based environmental group for its environmental record. Thanks to the efforts of civic groups, more and more people are becoming aware of the threat rampant industrialization poses to the habitat of endangered creatures such as the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin.
Now the Foxconn case has bought attention to the plight of the millions of Chinese migrant workers who endure life away from family and home while working very long shifts for low pay.
While the coverage may not be enough to stop the pollution, the habitat destruction or any further suicides, it is most welcome all the same.
The sooner people realize that people like Gou and Wang are just businessmen and not gods and start realizing the real cost of the everyday items and gadgets they manufacture, the better.
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