Update!

Foxconn has promised to give high raises to all its workers in China. At the Longhua plant where the deaths occurred, the raises will go up to over 100% by October 2010. Details here: http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201006080018&Type=aECO. This is a great result money-wise. I hope this change will also mean fewer hours for workers because they won't need to do as much overtime to get by. After all, man does not live by bread alone -- he also needs to sleep some. The above photos are of a protest at the Apple Store in New York on June 7 and of a similar protest at another Apple Store in Hong Kong on June 8. The gentleman to the left of the flowers in the New York photo is Li Qiang, a survivor of Tiananmen Square and director of China Labor Watch.

Please do not buy an iPhone or related equipment for the month of June.

Please also sign the petition in support of workers who make iPhones: http://www.gopetition.com/online/36639.html

Many of you may have heard of the cluster of worker suicides at the Shenzhen factories of Foxconn, a company that makes iPhones for Apple. Activists have been trying to call attention to conditions at Foxconn since before the first deaths. Foxconn has better industrial hygiene than most factories in the area, and the pay is at least nominally higher, but there is something poisonous in the Foxconn culture. Mainstream media has been relying on Foxconn and Apple press releases for information, so I have pasted a link to a better, more detailed account of the deaths.

One worker's family came to the Foxconn factory campus to publicly express their grief. The sign the young woman is holding up says "Injustice."

The best article:

A protest at Foxconn's Hong Kong offices:

Sadly, another suicide occurred the same day this protest occurred. When I first saw this video, I thought they were burning iPhones as an expression of disgust, but later I found out they were burning them as offerings to the dead. It's interesting to learn modes of protest from other cultures. The young woman on the megaphone is my friend Debby.

An in memoriam page by Chinese university students:

The company installed a net beneath worker dormitories in order to catch workers who throw themselves off the buildings.

-- AmandaBell - 01 Jun 2010