In class on Tuesday, we discussed and debated the corporate mega-giant, Foxconn. Until class, I had never heard of the Fortune Global 500 company. Until I learned more about Foxconn, I did not feel I was at liberty to criticize it. It’s indisputably an important part of the Chinese economy and it even sounded more humane than other alternatives a Chinese citizen has available. I found a Huffington Post article which breaks the company down by the numbers so we can get a better picture of what’s going on with Foxconn.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/propublica/foxconn-by-the-numbers_b_1237243.html
If you clicked on the above link and read through it, there are some pretty shocking figures. The suicides are only one number in the many. Foxconn commits other grosser human rights violations which are almost completely unnoticed by the consumer industry at large. This article was published January 27, 2012, only a few weeks ago. Daisey visited the factory back in 2010, and it does not sound like much has changed other than the addition of nets.
If you didn’t click on the link, below are some thought-provoking highlights that stood out the most to me:
- 1.2 million: number of workers employed by Foxconn in China
- 12: Hours in a typical work shift
- 230,000: number of workers at “Foxconn City” in Shenzhen
- 70,000: number of workers at Foxconn’s Chengdu plant who live in company dorms
- 34: continuous hours a Foxconn employee worked in 2010 before he collapsed and died
In addition, an estimated 40% of the world’s electronics are manufactured by Foxconn. With some hard numbers at our side, we can consider ourselves slightly more educated consumers, but with the grasp that Foxconn holds on the global market, will that really make any difference?