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One more employee from Foxconn falls off building and dies
- mkramlich 16y agothey need to fix that roof
- vaksel 16y agosure looks like it: "It is the ninth fall by Foxconn employees in five months."
- blogimus 16y agoAdd to that A blood-stained dagger was found with Liang and his body sustained several knife cuts. So he stabbed himself and then threw his body off the ledge?
- jarek 16y agoThey didn't say what kind of cuts, and the "dagger" might be an awkward translation. Maybe they just meant he cut his wrists. Unlikely, but not impossible.
- jrockway 16y agoThat would cut into iPhone profit margins.
- AlexBlom 16y agoI'm more interested in the 'blood stained dagger' Hopefully it is just a bad translation
- gfodor 16y agoThis is a baby step away from Onion level. "In the employee's pocket was a short suicide note with the wrong date. It read 'I am so sad I decided to jump off the building. Oh and I may or may not have decided to cut myself with a knife, too. Goodbye cruel world.' Mysteriously, the employee spelled his own name wrong in the note. Police are still investigating if this was a suicide."
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- sp332 16y agoIf working conditions have improved since the suicides started making the news, other employees may have manufactured another suicide hoping that conditions will improve further.
- zach 16y agoTo be fair, Foxconn employs over 300,000 workers in Shenzen. Yes, really -- they are the world's largest electronics manufacturer. To put that in perspective, that's more than two Shenzen Foxconn employees for every living MIT alumnus. Three hundred thousand. That's a lot of people. What has made these stories news is the suicide last July of a Foxconn employee who lost a prototype iPhone. However, suicides since then have not all been further results of product security breaches. Again, it's not entirely unexpected when you're talking about three hundred thousand people in close quarters that there will be some suicide, drama, criminality and perhaps even murder within that population. It's probably doing better by many measures than most cities of that size in the region.
- andrewtj 16y agoIn 1999 the suicide rate in China was 13 per 100,000 so my suspicion is that this story has only been up-voted for mud-slinging purposes. I'm a bit disappointed to see it on the front page — it doesn't strike me as being Hacker News.
- nandemo 16y agoWithout these 2 pieces of data from zach and you (which were not present in the article), it does look like news.
- jarek 16y agoAlso, the "make iPhones" note in HN submission title is a touch misleading considering Foxconn also makes pretty much everything else when it comes to electronics. I've stopped counting motherboard components I've seen with their logo on it.
- varjag 16y agoWhat is really interesting here, is how many jumps were committed from the same roof.
- wdewind 16y agoLook at Bobst Library's record at NYU...so many they (finally) put up plexiglass to prevent more.
- Judson 16y ago"Foxconn felt sorry over the death," he said. Is it just me or is there very little emotion translated over with this quote?
- jarek 16y agoIt's not just you, but I heavily suspect translation and/or social norms are at play.
- potatolicious 16y agoThere are many ways to say sorry in Chinese - some of which imply one's own culpability/guilt, others do not. I'm not sure there's a good translation for whatever statement Foxconn expressed.
- Tichy 16y agoThis confuses me. What are they supposed to be saying? As a non-native speaker, I have no idea what you mean. Do you criticize the writing of the article (ie it not being colorful enough)?
- CapitalistCartr 16y agoIn English, that would be the wrong way to express one's sorrow over the death. but it's a translation, so our cultural details are irrelevant.
- Tichy 16y agoWhat would be the right way to say it in English?
- jarek 16y agoFor the situation at hand, probably something like "It is with regret that we learn about the passing of Mr. Liang. We will keep his family and associates in our thoughts." Add "and prayers" if in USA. It means the same thing, it just sounds slightly more appropriate for a corporation in 2010. Disclaimer: I'm not quite native either.
- maigret 16y agoA few weeks ago I heard a live presentation by IT workers in Mexiko building smart phones, and what they told was not really nice. Employers paying sublegal salaries, harassment etc. Consumers should care about that but they (I also - mostly because of missing information) don't. It's not helping that an electronic product has hundred of different components in it, and all end manufacturers share the same few manufacturers. The current "solution" is to advise cities, governments and companies about fair(er) products so that these can put more pressure on the end vendor to control the manufacturing work conditions. We've still a long way to go.
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