富士康事件引起苹果戴尔关注

Foxconn has a reputation in the tech industry for its efficiency and the contract manufacturer churns out quality gadgets for big brands like Apple, HP and Dell for very low cost, but industrial analyst has been telling me that "to do that, the company is run like a military operation." 300,000 workers about sit on assembly lines doing the same thing all day long. A labor group said that the workers don't really feel comfortable, talking to the people next to them, and they have very little time to themselves and to socialize in the dormitories. So their lives basically become work, sleep, work, sleep.

One of the major problems of Foxconn is because the workers feel isolated, and alienated from their work. And they don’t know their colleagues and they can find no support from their peer groups and the other workers.

Workers complain that they don't even know the names of their roommates. Labor groups blame that feeling of isolation for the series of suicides at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory. Others point to the sheer quantity of work and Foxconn's non-disclosure agreements that it has to safeguard products like Apple's Ipad. Activists add that with Chinese economy growing so fast, workers also have higher expectations for themselves, and say that there is a lot of resentment.

What is Foxconn doing to try to prevent more suicides?

Well, so far as what they said is that they brought in a lot of not military, of mental health professionals and they also said they've set up a safety net. And they plan to do even more to try to prevent some of these deaths. But from what an analyst tells me is that a lot of this are just window dressing because what really makes Foxconn a force to be reckoned with within the tech industry is the source of its problems and that is that they run their people, their managers as well as their workers very very hard in order to make top-notch products for low cost.

And what are the responses from some of its big names clients Apple, Dell, HP?

Well Apple, Dell as well as Nokia have already said they are investigating of what measures Foxconn plans to take in order to try to prevent more of these suicides. They’ve also issued some statements, basically expressing sorrow for the suicides. But for the most part of what people have been telling me is that what they probably would need to do is to put even more pressure on Foxconn to a change in its practices because that could be the only thing that really changes this corporate culture.