No, I will not feel bad.

<rant type=”critique/selfrighteous”>

I must say that the Wired article, while informative, was done in really rather poor taste. Seventeen suicides… seventeen… purportedly out of 1 million employees… and that rate is a driving force for the article? National suicide rates are generally recorded as # per 100k population per year, so if we take the “spate of nine between March and May 2010,” (which I assume is the highest isolated rate) we end up with…

[9/(1 Million)] * [1yr/(3mon) ] * 100000 = 3.6 yearly suicides per 100k workers

Some Wikipedia hunting reveals that as of 2010, Foxconn has an estimated 920,000+ employees, with 2010 bearing witness to an estimated 18 attempted suicides with 14 deaths. This is a yearly attempt rate of ~1.96 per 100,000.

The yearly suicide rate in China is somewhat debated, but the 2010 value estimated by the Center for Disease Control/Prevention is 22.3 per 100,000.

So, during the three months of the highest suicide rate at Foxconn, the rate was only ~16% the national average in China. Although the Foxconn Suicides page linked above mentions that the Foxconn rate is likely lower in part because of lesser suicide rates for the younger adults that would make up the employee demographic, an 85% discrepancy from national average is something I’m more than comfortable with.

The rate of 1.96 in 2010 raises this gap to slightly over 91%. That is, Foxconn workers committed suicide at 91% lower rate per capita than other Chinese citizens.

So no, even though I may be willing to feel sorry for those in a more demanding and limited economic situation in general, I will not feel bad for buying hardware just because it was made in a factory. In fact, I’ll feel good about it; a little bit of the money I spend on that hardware allows someone to be employed at an admittedly horrible assembly job while their other options may only be worse.

So is this article enlightening about modern factory conditions at a multibillion dollar manufacturing company? Yes. Should attention be given to working conditions in nations with little worker protection and a large market for tedious manufacturing jobs? Of course. Are the suicides at Foxconn something that should be at the forefront of this attention? Not at all.

</rant>