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Microsoft Responds to Foxconn Suicide Protests |
Listed in: News Tags: foxconn, iphone, Microsoft, xbox 360
We talked yesterday about the mass-suicide threat issued by 300 unhappy workers at the Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China. If you didn’t catch the article, here’s the basic breakdown: Foxconn oversees manufacturing for devices such as Xbox 360s and iPhones, and has been repeatedly in the news for poor wages and terrible working conditions. Earlier in the month, workers threatened to throw themselves off a building due to unfair working practices.
Now that news of this mass-protest is breaking into the mainstream press, Microsoft has issued an official statement regarding the matter. The statement is pretty boilerplate corporate dodging and discusses how Microsoft takes working conditions “seriously” and how the company launched an immediate “independent investigation” of the events in Wuhan.
According to Microsoft, the protests arose as the result of “staffing assignments and transfer policies” resulting from a “regular production adjustment.” However, Microsoft made no mention of the original issue cited by the workers – that they requested a raise and were told to either quit with compensation or continue at their current pay (and that the compensation was never paid to those who chose to leave).
Microsoft also had no explanation for why “regular production adjustments” would cause so much stress to Foxconn employees that they saw mass-suicide as their only option. Overall, it looks like your basic big company “we don’t know what happens in our factories” situation, with Microsoft either feigning ignorance or actually unaware of Foxconn working conditions. It’s hard to tell which is worse.
This story likely isn’t over, and we’ll do our best to bring you information as it breaks. In the meantime, you can read about some of Foxconn’s greatest hits here: Foxconn Plans Safety Nets After 12th Suicide
[Kotaku]
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Comments
They're WAY too greedy to actually think about what it does to the workers. As long as they get their s*** built for cheap, they're fine with it.
Sadly, the increase that the workers are asking for is probably peanuts in the eyes of either company involved and yet the workers still get screwed.
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They're employees, so they can fire themselves and be unemployed any time.
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in china, its quite diferent, they get little money for lot of work and the other jobs are the same and if unemployed they dont eat, if they dont live/work in big cities like hong kong, beiging or shangai they only can be modern slaves
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and furtherermore, does anyone think the Chinese gov't will step in and stop this from happening? what's 300 people out of over 1 Billion living in China?
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So there's more than one company to blame.
Fanboy'd news... -.-
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people is forced by circumstances to be modern slaves and its so hard than when their abusive boses(at foxconn they are very abusive) cheat them they dont see other exit than kill themselves to make an scandal all for maintaining our materialistic lifestyle viable
dont worry by the end of the next week nobody will remember it and nobody will blame your beloved microsoft
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if any of the companies you mention try to pay more and compensate the workers the others that dont do that will have more money and can crush them lowering prices or with their next products being cheaper
just think how much would cost to produce an ipod if it were made in america, where workers dont accept those conditions
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