Suicide in the iPhone and iPad Factory

[LaylaMonroe]

So I just read this article about how workers in the iPhone and iPad factories are committing suicide.... it's pretty long, but it was a good - though alarming - read. It served as a reminder of how good we really have it in the US.

Here's one piece that stood out to me:

The dead have all been migrant workers, and for many Foxconn was their first job. The company pays most of its assembly-line workers in Shenzhen the city's minimum wage of $130 a month, and many work significant overtime hours in order to maximize their incomes. "The work [at Foxconn] is long, monotonous and boring," says Liu Kaiming, a labor researcher and executive director of the Shenzhen-based Institute of Contemporary Observation. "The speed is very fast and you can't slow down, for 10 hours a day at the minimum. You can see how someone could easily become numb and turn into a machine."

After hours, many workers live in on-site dormitories, where heavy staff turnover makes long-lasting personal connections impossible. That combination - long workdays and a minimal social safety net - leaves vulnerable young workers with few places to turn, says Liu. "Foxconn has 420,000 people; in the U.S. that would be a big city. Even in China that would be a big city, but it's a city without any families. Everyone is working. They live in a dormitory for seven months and don't know their own roommates' names."

[B3Wannabe]

So I just read this article about how workers in the iPhone and iPad factories are committing suicide.... it's pretty long, but it was a good - though alarming - read. It served as a reminder of how good we really have it in the US.

Here's one piece that stood out to me:

I know Africans that experience this, first hand, in Korea. As I've said before, many times, they work for MONTHS in unsafe conditions without being paid, and if they complain, they are turned over to immigration or beaten. Yes. Beaten. They also make as much as stated in that article. Many of them are Nigerian.

Our jurisdictional bishop would always wonder why we couldn't get the support (monetary) of the Africans, but part of it was because they weren't being paid. One of our preachers worked in a factory, and when I left Korea, he hadn't been paid in four months.

[THE WOLFMAN]

Sounds like Metropolis

(the 1927 movie, not Clark Kent's hangout)