A Gadget To Die For

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Electronics

“A Gadget To Die For“
Front page headline and feature story in by Martin Hickman in the Independent Newspaper, plus a timeline of corporate and activist activity into which this story fits.
Front page featured above. The full text of the article is available below, and on the newspaper website here.

On May 27th 2010, the UK’s Independent newspaper published one of its most memorable front pages. This was the day that Apple’s new iPad device was being launched in the UK. The hype for this product had been extreme. At its launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said it could help consumers to do things ‘in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’. Classic commodity fetishism! Apple Stores had so many orders that they had to meet. The factory where they were being made in China – owned by the Foxconn corporation – had to keep up with demand. Those customers couldn’t be kept waiting. But the hours and working conditions that the people making these iPads in Foxconn’s factory had to endure were too much for some. Reports started to emerge of extreme levels of stress driving some workers to make their way to the roof of the factory to jump to their deaths. One of these workers was Ma Xiangqian, whose family carried a photo portrait of their son to a protest outside the factory that was broadcast on international news. Juxtaposing a photo of this new device and photo of a worker who committed suicide with the perfect double-meaning title ‘A gadget to die for’ contributed to the sullying of Apple’s marketing plans. More importantly, it was just one example of the sustained attention to the working conditions in the company’s Foxconn factories in China that was building at this time (e.g. see the factory worker suicide prevention level on the Phone Story game here). On followthethings.com, we tend to choose individual examples of trade justice activism and find out where they came from, and what impacts they have had on, for example, the pay and conditions of supply chain workers. But in this case, it’s not just this one story that made a difference. This page outlines a different story. The Independent story is copied in full, and is followed – like a standard followthethings.com page – by everything we could find about how it was discussed and what impact it had (not much). Then, below this, we try to place this news story in context, starting with the launch of the iPad by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, then following iPad news stories as they were published over the following months, then finding when and how the ‘iPad suicide’ story came to public attention (in the Independent and elsewhere), and then tracking this scandal and Apple’s reactions to it. This larger context had an important impact, forcing corporate change and – arguably – improving pay and conditions in Foxconn factories. More than anything, this page tries to show how trade justice activism works when its bubbles up in multiple places and formats, not necessarily in a wholly coordinated way. For this example, it shows the importance of on-the-ground student activists – in this case the Hong Kong based Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) – investigating, protesting, creating and promoting media content that others – like Independent journalists Martin Hickman – can pick up and run with.

Article reference: Martin Hickman (2010) A gadget to die for? Concern over human cost overshadows iPad launch. The Independent 27 May (www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-over-human-cost-overshadows-ipad-launch-1983888.html last accessed 4 August 2010)

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A gadget to die for? followthethings.com/a-gadget-to-die-for.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 42 minutes.

Original

The American electronics giant Apple was investigating damaging allegations last night that Chinese workers making its new iPad device were subjected to such “inhumane” treatment that some of them took their own lives by jumping off factory roofs.

Documents seen by The Independent reveal there are widespread failures by Apple’s suppliers to respect standards on labour rights and safety specified by the company, which had sales of £30bn last year.

An update to the US firm’s supplier codes in February revealed that a majority of its 102 facilities flouted its “rigorous” rules on working hours, which include a weekly limit of 60 hours a week – equivalent to 12 hours a day. Some 39 per cent broke rules on workplace injury prevention and 30 per cent broke guidelines on the management of toxic chemicals.

Audits uncovered violations involving child labour, falsified records and disposal of hazardous waste.

The company has been embarrassed by publicity surrounding 11 suicide attempts at the vast Foxconn facility near the southern boom city of Shenzhen, where the iPad is made, which threatens to overshadow the global launch of the touch-screen computer tomorrow.

Yesterday a “saddened and upset” Apple promised to investigate whether the plant, which employs 300,000 people who earn around 30p an hour, should continue to make its products, which sell for hundreds of pounds each.

At the 1.2-square mile Foxconn facility, which also makes products for Dell, Hewlett Packard and Acer, nine workers have died and two have been gravely injured in roof jumps in the first five months of 2010.

All the incidents involved workers aged under 25, who apparently have been disturbed by the long shifts and strict discipline. Talking and music are banned during shifts, which last at least 10 hours. Workers must perform a certain number of repetitive operations per shift, under the eye of allegedly harsh military-style supervisors.

“Foxconn’s management is totally inhuman,” one worker told the Reuters news agency. Another said: “They don’t treat workers as humans.”

A young Foxconn line supervisor, Tang Wenying, told journalists allowed into the complex yesterday: “This is a good place to work because they treat us better than many [other] Chinese factories.” In an attempt to prevent more suicides, the Taiwanese-owned firm has hired 2,000 singers, dancers and gym trainers. It is also putting up netting to thwart future suicides.

Concerns were expressed about the factory three years ago by China Labour Watch, a US organisation which claims dire conditions involved “serious labour violations including excessive working hours, unpaid wages for up to 30 minutes of work each day, compulsory overtime and extremely poor dormitory conditions.”

Last July, it revealed the suicide of a young worker, Sun Danyong. According to its report, only workers producing for Apple were given a stool to sit while working, while all others had to stand.

Workers also complained of violence, including beatings with iron bars and whips.

The allegations have not surprised campaigners, who say that while Western shoppers often hear of problems at Asian clothes factories, conditions for workers in cleaner, bigger consumer electronics plants are just as grim. “When you look at large-scale export-driven trade, it doesn’t really matter whether the workers are making clothes or electronics,” said Simon MacRae, senior campaigns officer at War on Want. “There’s a similar pattern: long working hours, very poor pay and suppression of labour rights. The sector provides jobs but without decent wages you are not going to lift people out of poverty.”

Last month a report by the National Labour Committee, an American NGO, found that workers at a Chinese factory supplying Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and other brands toiled for up to 15 hours a day in heat of up to 30C. Other allegations about the KYE factory included sexual harassment and humiliation by supervisors.

Teenage workers were pictured slumped over their desks during a break in a 15-hour shift. One said: “We are like prisoners. We do not have a life. Only work.”

KYE management responded that conditions were excellent and fully complied with Chinese labour laws. Microsoft said it was “very concerned” and launched an investigation.

Although China has occasionally expressed concern over the regime in export factories, the spate of suicides has spurred a national debate about whether workers fulfilling foreign orders are being pushed too hard.

Campaigners believe Bangladeshi clothes factories are the very worst sweatshops, but factories in China can combine the financial advantages of a cheap labour supply with a totalitarian state’s intolerance of industrial rights. Most of those in free trade export zones such as Shenzhen, the “the workshop of the world”, are owned by foreign companies.

Apple, which will open its 27 stores around the UK as early as 8am tomorrow to sell the iPad, said it was taking the spate of suicides “very seriously”. A spokeswoman said: “A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events and we will continue our ongoing inspections of the facilities where our products are made.”

Hewlett Packard said it was investigating “the Foxconn practices that may be associated with these tragic events”. Dell said it expected its suppliers “to employ the same high standards we do in our own facilities”. Acer declined to comment.

Hard labour for gadgets

• 60 hours Maximum working week stipulated in Apple’s “supplier responsibility” code of practice
• 54 per cent Factories breaking Apple’s rules on working hours (according to Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report)
• 39 per cent Factories breaking Apple’s injury prevention rules
• 30 per cent Plants breaking Apple’s hazardous substance rules
• 30 pence Hourly wage of 300,000 workers at Foxconn in Shenzhen
• 86F Temperature exceeded in workshops at the KYE Factory in China, which supplies Microsoft
• 2,000 Number of Microsoft mice mouse-makers in the KYE Factory must make per shift
• 15 hours Maximum length of a shift at the KYE factory

Discussion / Responses

VOCABULARY: 1. A gadget is a small machine or device which does something useful. You sometimes refer to something as a gadget when you are suggesting that it is complicated and unnecessary. • Bob could not understand why Mary needed so many kitchen gadgets, especially as her cooking was so awful. 2. The Independent’s headline features a play on the expression ‘to die for’. If you describe something as ‘to die for’, you mean that it is very desirable or attractive. The croissants from that new ‘patisserie’ are to die for. And, of course, you have the idea of Asian factory workers literally dying by committing suicide (Source: Hill 2010, np link).

Todays report in the Independent has left me in utter disgust and disappointment. Martin Hickman wrote of the inhumane treatment of Chinese workers in Beijing. ‘Some of them took their own lives by jumping off factory rooftops’ (Source: Lehane 2010, np link).

This week’s Reith lecture by Professor Martin Rees dealt in part with society’s inability to adequately assess risk. I was reminded of this when reading in the Economist about suicides at the Foxconn plant in China. … The general tone was that the conditions in the Foxconn complex were such that many people resorted to suicide from despair of working there. The thing is, according to the Economist, ”The toll (a dozen this year) is lower than the suicide rate among the general population in China.” And according to the Telegraph (in a different article) “Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, said that the suicide rate at the Chinese factory – where 12 of the company’s 400,000 employees have killed themselves this year – was lower than the overall suicide rate for the United States.” I am not making any comment on the working conditions in the complex or anywhere else. But it seems that perhaps we need to inspect our own cognitive bias, and Foxconn should maybe be lauded rather than criticised (Source: Hadfield 2010, np link).

Outcomes / Impacts

I have two apple computers and I am devastated by the news. I was going to buy an ipad and now I am most certainly not (Source: Lehane 2010, np link).

Inspiration / Technique / Process / Methodology

What follows places Hickman’s 2010 ‘A Gadget to Die For’ newspaper article as part of a sequence of interlinked, international events and reports of events relating to the launch of the iPad, the workers suicides at the Foxconn factory where it was made, the repercussions for factory workers in China of Apple’s response to the news of these worker suicides breaking, and the activism of Hong Kong labour rights organisation Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour.

San Francisco, January 27th 2010

At an invitation-only event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils a thin, light, aluminium and glass ‘multi-touch’ tablet media player called the iPad. It is, he claims, a ‘magical and revolutionary device’ which ‘creates and defines and entirely new category of devices that will connect users and their apps and content in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’ (in Apple 2010a). A video of his presentation is posted on the Apple website, YouTube and elsewhere and the iPad is news around the world.

Online, March 31st-April 1st 2010

iPads distributed to a small, select ‘inner circle’ in advance of their sale are reviewed in mainstream North American media outlets – like Time magazine, ABC News and The New York Times – and on specialist blogs – like boinboing.net and the Root (Agarwal 2010). Readers submit hundreds of online comments in response, and these reviews are read, commented upon, and written about worldwide.

USA, April 3rd 2010

The iPad goes on sale. Reports describe people queuing for days to be the first to get one in store. Customer reviews quickly appear online and in the press (Apple 2010b).

USA, May 3rd 2010

Apple announces that one million iPads have been sold (Apple 2010c). Jobs states that “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers’ (in Apple 2010d).

Hong Kong, May 25th 2010

Workers’ rights NGO Students and scholars against corporate misbehaviour (SACOM) publish a report (Chan 2010a) and lead a group of protestors performing traditional Chinese funeral rights at the headquarters of the Foxconn corporation (Moore 2010a&b, Li & Sexton 2010). The report details a series of 10 suicide attempts (8 ‘successful’) since the beginning of 2010 by young Chinese factory workers employed by Foxconn in Shenzhen City’s Longuhua Science and Technology Park. Foxconn is China’s biggest exporter and this is the largest factory in the world (Chan 2010a, Moore 2010b). Its 300,000 assembly workers, most young migrants from rural China, endure low pay, long hours, a tense, dehumanised workplace, and a lack of ‘affective and social support’ (Chan 2010a, 8). A Chinese journalist working under cover reports that ‘Workers are feeling exhausted to the extent that they envy their injured co-workers. Why? They can take some rest from work as they are recovering’ (in Chan 2010s, 8). Local press reports attribute the deaths to ‘overwork’, ‘too much pressure’ and ‘unstable emotions’ resulting from the factory regime. Another NGO representative argues that workers travelling the 30 miles to Shenzhen City ‘envy at people of their own age driving luxury cars and carrying the iPhones they themselves make, but cannot afford’ (Moore 2010b). TV news bulletins in China show security camera footage of one 24 year old victim ‘walking unsteadily out into the roof of a Foxconn building on the way to her death’ (Moore 2010a). An ongoing series of TV news reports about ‘Foxconn suicide’ – in Chinese, English and with English subtitles – are posted on YouTube.¹ By the time SACOM’s report is published, Foxconn workers at Longhua Park have already assembled two million iPads (alongside Nintendo Wiis, Nokia cellphones, Dell computers, Amazon’s Kindle and other popular consumer electronic devices: Hickman 2010a, Moore 2010a). SACOM’s report suggests that Apple’s marketing campaign and the enthusiastic take-up of iPads by US consumers contributed to the suicides by sending ‘extreme pressure all the way down to [Apple’s] Chinese suppliers’ (Chan 2010a, 5).

China, May 27th 2010

"Chinese state media has reported that an employee of electronics giant Foxconn has jumped to his death, the 10th suspected suicide this year at the firm's huge production base in southern China. The manufacturer of high-profile products such as Apple iPhones and Intel motherboards, however, says the number of suicides at its plant is much lower than the national average. The suicide rate in China is about 12 people per 100,000, according to the health ministry. Critics say the Foxconn incidents throw a spotlight on the company's tough labour practices. Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reports. (May 27, 2010)" (Source: Al Jazeera English 2010, np link).

UK, May 28th, 2010

Three days after SACOM publishes its report, the front page of a UK national newspaper – The Independent – brings the two strands of this story together in a starkly visual way. Beneath the headline – ‘A gadget to die for?’ – is a photograph of two objects in a spotlight. They’re the same size and shape. One is an iPad. The other is a framed photo of a young Chinese man. The text beneath one reads, ‘This is the iPad, the most eagerly awaited consumer product of the year, available in the UK from tomorrow’. The text beneath the other reads, ‘This is Ma Xiangqian, driven to suicide, the latest victim of ‘inhuman’ conditions in Asia’s electronics factories’. His suicide is detailed in SACOM’s report, and his family take this framed photograph with them to protest and mourn the Foxconn deaths (see Barboza 2010, Pomphret & Soh 2010). Apple is embarrassed by this and hundreds more mainstream and online media stories taking about the iPad to the ‘Foxconn suicides’ in the same breath,² and journalists around the world track the fallout from the story over the following days, weeks and months.

Worldwide, May 28th 2010

After delays caused by massive sales in the USA, the iPad goes on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK (Apple 2010e). Similar scenes, stories, reviews, comments and discussions are reported in the press (e.g. Naughton & Ahmed 2010).

USA, May 31st, 2010

Apple announces that two million iPads have now been sold. Jobs says of those still waiting, ‘We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone’ (Apple 2010e).

USA, June 2nd, 2010

Steve Jobs claims the Foxconn factory is not a ‘sweatshop’, that its suicide rate is lower than the USA’s, and that Apple is ‘on top’ of the situation (Beaumont 2010). A worker dies after working a 34 hour shift (Hannaford 2010).

China, June 3rd, 2010

Foxconn raises basic Shenzhen factory wages by a third (Moore 2010c). SACOM declares June 8th, 2010 a ‘Global Day of Remembrance for Victims of Foxconn’, protests outside a Foxconn shareholder meeting, and hands over a petition endorsed ‘more than 5,000 organisations and individuals from over 100 countries’ (SACOM 2010; Chan 2010b).

USA, June 22nd, 2010

Apple announces that three million iPads have now been sold (Apple 2010f).

China, June 9th, 2010

Foxconn is ‘employing psychologists, punchbags for prostrated workers … and safety nets around its roofs to stop workers leaping from them’ (Harding 2010).

China, June 10th, 2010

Foxconn pay rises encourage workers in other Chinese factories to strike for higher pay (Foster 2010).

China, June 11th, 2010

Foxconn recruits monks and social workers to help workers with their problems, and workers have to sign contracts promising not to sue Foxconn as a result of ‘any unexpected death or injury, including suicide or self-torture’ (Malone & Jones 2010).

USA, June 12th, 2010

An American Apple fan returning from Shenzhen on research for his monologue about Steve Jobs concludes, ‘It’s painful to realise that these things you love so much have blood on them’ (McKeon 2010).

China, July 6th 2010

Chinese factory workers have been following the press coverage online, are coordinating strike action via social networking websites, and are gaining pay rises as a result of their actions (Pomphret & Soh 2010).

UK, July 16th, 2010

Independent journalist Martin Hickman concludes that Apple is no longer the ‘creative, edgy innovator that launched the iPod in 2001’, the reputation of the ‘entertainment and information colossus’ has crumbled (Hickman 2010b).

China, July 22nd, 2010

Foxconn workers were offered two pay rises in June which could more than double their pay, the company is increasing its prices to clients to cover increasing wage costs, the wave of strikes in China’s coastal industrial cities continues, and Foxconn is increasing automated production and moving low-margin production to new, lower-wage factories in inland China (Anon 2010). The story continues…

This is when our web-searching stopped...

…but you could keep following it, comment on it, send links to others about it, write about it on your blog it, create and post a mashup from its YouTube films, contact others to protest about it, write an essay about it … ‘in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’, if you had an iPad.

Page compiled by Ian Cook (last updated December 2024).

Sources

Agarwal, A. (2010) The new Inner Circle of Steve Jobs. Digital Inspiration April 1 (www.labnol.org/gadgets/inner-circle-of-steve-jobs/13341/ last accessed 4 August 2010)

Anon (2010) Foxconn to hike prices to cover China pay. Associated Press, 22 July (www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gFeK9437J_UKowin57Dbi1qFLfdwD9H40CS00 last accessed 5 August 2010)

Hannaford, K. (2010) Another Foxconn Employee Dies, After Working 34-Hours Straight. Gizmodo.com 2 June (http://gizmodo.com/5553223/another-foxconn-employee-dies-after-working-34+hours-straight last accessed 5 August 2010)

Apple (2010a) Apple launches iPad. Apple.com 27 January (www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/27ipad.html last accessed 4 August 2010)