Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple products and game consoles, has had a rough time with worker suicides and reports of bad employee treatment. Well, it just got worse.
Kotaku is reporting that on January 2, over 300 employees at a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China threatened to throw themselves off the roof of the building in a mass suicide. The workers manufacture the Xbox 360 console.
According to the Chinese anti-government Web site China Jasmine Revolution, the workers were denied compensation they were promised.
On January 2, the workers reportedly asked for a raise. They were told they could either keep their job with no pay raise or quit and get compensation. Obviously, many quit to get the compensation. The agreement was supposedly terminated and the workers never received their payments.
The mayor of Wuhan was called to the scene to talk the group down. On January 3, the group decided not to jump which ended the whole affair.
Suicides were a major problem in 2010 with Foxconn installing nets to prevent suicides at some of its facilities.
This story brings Foxconn and overworked factory employees in China to the forefront again. In our mad dash to get the latest gadgets and have a steady supply of them, we forget to think about those in other parts of the world that make these devices. Hopefully, better employee treatment practices will soon be implemented so everybody can be happy.