employees to sign a pledge promising that they won't commit suicide,
according to the Daily Mail.
The company has been criticized for providing an unsavory working
environment, with a string of worker suicides putting the spotlight on bad
conditions and low pay at the plant, where some 420,000 employees work. In
the last 16 months, at least 14 Foxconn workers in plants in the Chinese
cities of Shenzen and Chengdu have killed themselves. It's believed that
many more have survived suicide attempts or been stopped before they acted.
Foxconn has even taken such steps as installing nets outside factory
dormitories to deter potential jumpers.
In the strange agreement, employees vow not to commit suicide, and if they
do, they pledge that their families will only seek the minimum legal
damages. The agreement was uncovered by a study by the Centre for Research
on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate
Misbehaviour .
The study also found that workers were forced to log overtime far beyond the
legal limit of 36 hours per month. Additionally, when the company was
scrambling to meet high demand for the iPad, workers were only allowed one
day off in 13. Workers not meeting performance standards were also publicly
castigated in front of other employees. Workers are also banned from talking
and sitting down during 12-hour shifts. Some are only allowed to see their
families once a year, the study said.
"It is not something we endorse or encourage. However, I would not exclude
that this might happen given the diverse and large population of our
workforce. But we are working to change it," Foxconn spokesperson Louis Woo
told the Daily Mail.
Woo also said that employees were "encouraged not to engage in conversations
that may distract them from the attention needed to ensure accuracy and
their own safety."
Recently Foxconn charged three employees with leaking a case design for the
iPad 2.
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