Apple iPhone worker kills himself
p2pnet news view | Mobiles:- Workers building Apple iPods, mostly young women from rural areas of China labouring in, 15-hour shifts, were, housed in dormitories from which outsiders are banned, and regularly pay about half their wages for room and board charges, said a UK newspaper in 2006.
And in a report, Apple admitted there were indeed, violations to our Code of Conduct.
Now, “Last Thursday, 25 year-old Sun Danyong committed suicide after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype he was responsible for went missing,” says Digital Beat, going on:
“It`s a story, from what tech-industry friends in China tell me, of how Apple`s secretive ways send extreme pressure all the way down the company`s international supply chain.”
In the 2006 scandal, the BBC quoted Apple as describing the Foxconn facility in China, where the women worked, as a `campus`.
It, includes factories, employee housing, banks, a post office, a hospital, supermarkets, and a variety of recreational facilities including soccer fields, a swimming pool, TV lounges and Internet cafes, says Apple. Ten cafeterias are also located throughout the campus offering a variety of menu choices such as fresh vegetables, beef, seafood, rice, poultry, and stir-fry noodles. In addition, employees have access to 13 different restaurants on campus. Employees were pleased with the variety and quality of food offerings.
In this new story, “Sun was a recent engineering graduate, and had landed a job handling product communications for electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn in Shenzhen, a leading city in the industry-heavy Guangdong province near Hong Kong,” says Digital Beat, continuing »»»
He was tasked with shipping iPhone prototypes from Foxconn to Apple. The sequence of events goes as follows, based on news reports currently coming out of China, including a major local paper, Southern Metropolis Daily. The news has yet to be reported in the English-language press, at least that I`ve seen, although it`s all over the Chinese-language Twittersphere.
On Thursday, July 9th, Sun got 16 prototype phones from the assembly line at a local Foxconn factory. At some point in the next few days, he discovered that one of the phones was missing. He suspected that it had been left at the factory, but couldn`t find it. On Monday, July 13, he reported the missing phone to his boss.
Then, that Wednesday, three Foxconn employees searched his apartment â illegally, according to Chinese law. Accusations are flying that Sun was detained and physically abused during the investigation, although this has not been substantiated (possible evidence: there`s this somewhat garbled and potentially faked instant message exchange from Sun shortly before his death).
What is known: On Thursday — a little after 3 a.m. according to surveillance videos in the apartment building — he jumped out of a window in his apartment building to his death.
“I`m not saying that Apple`s to blame for the worker`s suicide, but there`s something to be said about the side effects of borderline-insanity level of secrecy that Apple demands of its partners,” PowerPage editor Jason O’Grady says in ZDNet.
Stay tuned.
Apple iPods – iPod sweat-shop accusation, June 15, 2006
Apple – Report on iPod Manufacturing, August 17, 2006
Digital Beat – iPhone prototype goes missing; Chinese worker investigated, commits suicide, July 21, 2009
BBC – Apple admits excessive iPod hour, August 18, 2006
ZDNet – Chinese worker commits suicide after losing prototype iPhone 4G, July 21, 2009
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July 21st, 2009 at 5:57 pm
the poor worker did himself in because he knew that it was full of low end crappy parts and didn’t want to disgrace his family
July 21st, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Please tell me he posted pics before he killed himself.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
” It, âincludes factories, employee housing, banks, a post office, a hospital, supermarkets, and a variety of recreational facilities including soccer fields, a swimming pool, TV lounges and Internet cafes,â says Apple. âTen cafeterias are also located throughout the campus offering a variety of menu choices such as fresh vegetables, beef, seafood, rice, poultry, and stir-fry noodles. In addition, employees have access to 13 different restaurants on campus. Employees were pleased with the variety and quality of food offerings.â
This ‘Campus’ sounds more like a minimum security prison, or a slave compound.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 am
So Post Offices and Internet Cafe’s are common in prisons and slave compounds?
Not quite convincing there Dreddsnik.