The Price of Some iPhones: Suicide, Despair

The wash of machine noise remains constant in the ears of Ah Wei as he toils away during a 12-hour overnight shift burnishing iPhones for Foxconn Corporation based in Taipai, China. Prohibited from talking to his colleagues and gathering a pittance for pay on a monthly basis, he has considered ending it all because of his futile feelings about his future.

“Life is meaningless,” said Ah, who makes an average of $132 per month. “Everyday, I repeat the same thing I did yesterday. We get yelled at all the time. It’s very tough around here.”

In the first five months of the year, 10 people working the huge Foxconn conglomerate have taken their lives. According to Ah, the work environment provides little but despair.

“The fundamental problem for Foxconn and other Chinese factories is that their business model relies on a low-cost workforce sourced from rural areas of China,” said Pun Ngai, a professor of applied social sciences at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. “Due to its size, Foxconn has to be that much tougher than other factories, and has to become more emotionally detached from its employees than others.”

Foxconn has grown immensely by contracting with Apple to produce its popular iPhone. Apple CEO Steve JobsSteve Jobs has been inundated with questions and accusations that the success of his company relies heavily on near-slave labor methodology. Besides describing the situation as “very troubling,” Jobs makes clear that its suppliers are thoroughly vetted.

“We’re all over this,” said Jobs, speaking yesterday on Tuesday, June 1, 2010, at a technology conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Jobs defended the likes of Foxcomm saying that Apple does one of the best jobs inspecting suppliers, he said, adding Foxconn is “not a sweatshop.”

From visual appearance the compound supports his contention. Foxconn’s Longhua complex near Shenzhen, China covers three square kilometers (1.16 square miles) and has clean tree-lined streets crisscrossing the complex with a water fountain at the center of the facility. Workers wear color-coded polo shirts emblazoned with ‘Foxconn’ in Chinese characters. Men adorn the blue and women wear red. The Security detail wears a distinctive white. The complex includes a hospital, several restaurants and a swimming pool surrounded by palm trees.

Still, the pale of the suicides haunts the Foxconn plants.

“It’s hard to make friends because you aren’t allowed to chat with your colleagues during work,” said Liu Ben, a 24-year-old worker who has sought treatment at Shenzhen Kang Ning Hospital where he was seeking help for insomnia. “Most of us have little education and have no skills so we have no choice but to do this kind of job. I feel no sense of achievement and I’ve become a machine.”