iPad launches in Canada, around the world
Just remember who made it and why it is so cheap.Globalization of labour demands a global labour movement.....for those who say unions are out dated......China is a developing capitalist country in case anyone still thinks it is communist......
They work up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, assembling products that most cannot afford to buy themselves: Apple iPhones, Dell computers and Nokia mobiles.
Experts said deep-rooted problems lie behind the deaths of so many young workers.
Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Beijing-based Tsinghua University, said Foxconn represents the status quo of China's profit-driven manufacturing industry, in which companies are trying to offer low salaries to workers to control production costs.
Workers are usually kept in closed industrial parks with no access to social activities and no way to develop social relations, she said.
"This problem is not limited to Foxconn, and it's not only a psychological problem but also a social one," she said.
Guo also said labor-intensive manufacturing companies like Foxconn should make more efforts to enable their employees to have normal social lives.
"There should be communities and the workers should have time to have contact with others," she said.
The monthly salary for a typical Foxconn employee is about 900 yuan ($131), so many workers volunteer to work extra hours to earn more money.
Lu Huilin, an associate professor of sociology at Peking University, said the string of jumps also reflects the poor situation of the second-generation migrant workers.
All the confirmed dead Foxconn workers are between 18 and 24 years old, and most come from the rural and less-developed regions.
