Foxconn and its partners-notably Apple-found themselves defending factory conditions while struggling to explain the deaths. Reports from inside the factories warned of "sweatshop" conditions old allegations of forced overtime burbled back to life. Some saw the Foxconn suicides as a damning consequence of our global hunger for low-cost electronics. When one jumper left a note explaining that he committed suicide to provide for his family, the program of remuneration for the families of jumpers was canceled. What had seemed to be a series of isolated incidents was becoming an appalling trend. Although the company disputes some cases, evidence gathered from news reports and other sources indicates that 17 Foxconn workers have killed themselves in the past half decade. There were also suicides at other Foxconn plants in China. Then a spate of nine between March and May 2010-all jumpers. But until two summers ago, most Americans had never heard of Foxconn. Altogether, the company employs about a million people, nearly half of whom work at the 20-year-old Shenzhen plant. Foxconn's output accounts for nearly 40 percent of that revenue. ![]() ![]() Foxconn, the single largest private employer in mainland China, manufactures many of the products-motherboards, camera components, MP3 players-that make up the world's $150 billion consumer-electronics industry. Not to avoid the topic, I don't think-the suicides are the reason I am at a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, a bustling industrial city in southern China-but simply because they are so prevalent. My tour guides don't mention the nets until I do. Since they were installed, the suicide rate has slowed to a trickle. They carried a message: You can throw yourself off any building you like, as long as it isn't one of these. ![]() The nets went up in May, after the 11th jumper in less than a year died here. They drape every precipice, steel poles jutting out 20 feet above the sidewalk, loosely tangled like volleyball nets in winter.
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