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Since the suicides Gou works about 16 hours a day and has been living in a room behind his office in the Longhua factory, where eats his three meals at his desk. He doesn't have much time for anything besides work anymore, and rarely gets to plays golf.
First Sign of Changes
In the beginning Gou didn't see a few suicides, out of 800,000 employees, as a problem. He saw nothing to be worried about, and didn't think he was responsible. In May 2010, after the 9th suicide, Foxconn went into "full crisis-management mode" they put up suicide nets, added counselors, and raised the wages by 30% (about $176 a month) and said another raise would come in October. They also started to establish this first ever public relations program. Throughout 2012, after the wave of suicides, worker riots, child labor violation reports and explosions, Foxconn started to let more and more foreign media sources come in to look around and conduct interview. Before it wasn’t just Foxconn keeping away the media, companies like Apple and Nintendo were also involved, which caused the public to become even more curious as to why the secrets. The media coverage is only one part to Foxconn’s “public makeover,” the other part is the Fair Labor Association’s, FLA, publication of their audit findings including "an ensuing pledge by the company to improve overtime, health and safety violations found by the investigation."
Changes
Foxconn claims to be rethinking how they treat their employees, and have even publicly promised to make changes. They said by July of 2013 their workers will only have to work 49 hours a week, and get the same amount of money. There will have to be other changes as well in order to keep up with the demand. They will have to add more production lines, dorms, cafeterias, and hire tens of thousands of new employees. Due to these changes there are more worries about money, like how will they be able to afford this. As of March 2012 they had not said yet if they would be eating the cost, or if companies like Apple would help to pay for it, or if the cost would be dumped on to the consumer, all they knew was that they would probably have to absorb some of the cost, but not all of it. Apple, who had started to do routine audits and check-ins on the factories, was happy to hear of the changes the company is willing to make, and has been helping to educate the workers of their rights.
First Sign of Changes
In the beginning Gou didn't see a few suicides, out of 800,000 employees, as a problem. He saw nothing to be worried about, and didn't think he was responsible. In May 2010, after the 9th suicide, Foxconn went into "full crisis-management mode" they put up suicide nets, added counselors, and raised the wages by 30% (about $176 a month) and said another raise would come in October. They also started to establish this first ever public relations program. Throughout 2012, after the wave of suicides, worker riots, child labor violation reports and explosions, Foxconn started to let more and more foreign media sources come in to look around and conduct interview. Before it wasn’t just Foxconn keeping away the media, companies like Apple and Nintendo were also involved, which caused the public to become even more curious as to why the secrets. The media coverage is only one part to Foxconn’s “public makeover,” the other part is the Fair Labor Association’s, FLA, publication of their audit findings including "an ensuing pledge by the company to improve overtime, health and safety violations found by the investigation."
Changes
Foxconn claims to be rethinking how they treat their employees, and have even publicly promised to make changes. They said by July of 2013 their workers will only have to work 49 hours a week, and get the same amount of money. There will have to be other changes as well in order to keep up with the demand. They will have to add more production lines, dorms, cafeterias, and hire tens of thousands of new employees. Due to these changes there are more worries about money, like how will they be able to afford this. As of March 2012 they had not said yet if they would be eating the cost, or if companies like Apple would help to pay for it, or if the cost would be dumped on to the consumer, all they knew was that they would probably have to absorb some of the cost, but not all of it. Apple, who had started to do routine audits and check-ins on the factories, was happy to hear of the changes the company is willing to make, and has been helping to educate the workers of their rights.
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Care Centers
In recent years they have added 24 hour care centers and counselors, "Campus Loving Heart" website, big brother and big sister programs, and are "...teaching managers to be more attuned to workers’ emotional needs." In the Shenzhen factory there is an employee care center. The center gets on average 1,200 phone calls a day, and about ten visitors a day. As you can see in the pictures, the care center is not the most welcoming place, like most of the rooms on campus. The room is pretty empty, with just a few chairs and pictures and beige walls, and the suicide nets are visible from the window. Besides that the center does provide free help to the employees, but it does not have physician patient confidentiality, "If an employee is deemed to have a problem and a risk assessment is carried out...the worker’s manager is informed and brought in to explain what issues the worker has had..." This kind of action does not encourage the employees to go or have discussion in the care center.
In recent years they have added 24 hour care centers and counselors, "Campus Loving Heart" website, big brother and big sister programs, and are "...teaching managers to be more attuned to workers’ emotional needs." In the Shenzhen factory there is an employee care center. The center gets on average 1,200 phone calls a day, and about ten visitors a day. As you can see in the pictures, the care center is not the most welcoming place, like most of the rooms on campus. The room is pretty empty, with just a few chairs and pictures and beige walls, and the suicide nets are visible from the window. Besides that the center does provide free help to the employees, but it does not have physician patient confidentiality, "If an employee is deemed to have a problem and a risk assessment is carried out...the worker’s manager is informed and brought in to explain what issues the worker has had..." This kind of action does not encourage the employees to go or have discussion in the care center.
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- Dorms
- In the dorms friends are now able to choose to live together, but many people would rather live off campus due to the "strict oversight by guards, who perform spot-checks on dorm rooms and enforce other rules in an occasionally harsh manner – though others defended the guards, saying worker behavior on campus was occasionally out of line."
- Campus Learning Centers
Foxconn has also added some campus learning centers that "...offer expanded educational opportunities...including an array of training courses and degree programs from junior college to doctorates." They have about 22,000, about 10% of the workforce, people enrolled in classes, but many feel that it isn’t worth it because the class hours aren’t flexible, which makes it hard for them to manage everything. They would could probably only take three classes a month, or they wouldn’t even learn anything there. Even though Foxconn’s attempts to improve their worker’s lives haven’t been going perfectly they are "better than...other electronics factories in the area where management can be cruel, facilities lacking, overtime extreme and pay docked (or even eliminated) for trivial violations of strict factory rules."
- Union
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- Money
While Gou’s official salary is only one taiwanese dollar, about three US cents, "...analysts say he pays executive bonuses out of his own pocket using dividends from his company shares held in trust. That makes it easier for Foxconn to retain top-level staff without hurting the bottom line, says Jamie Wang, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Taipei...At the company’s Chinese New Year party in 2008, Gou gave away 300,000 shares in Hon Hai as the top prize for the raffle, a stake now worth $1 million." While his ways aren’t always what others would do he does what he can to show the employees he cares. That’s why Foxconn is stepping up and trying to better the lives of their employees. Foxconn has a lot of employees to help, they employ about 1.5 million people all together, and over 200,000 workers just in their Shenzhen factory alone.
Changes Aren't Perfect
Even though they are working to improve the conditions, with the help of the union, there has still been issues, like the worker protesting on the production lines for the iPhone 5, just a mere month after a protest that injured forty people. There was also the riot that started as a "personal dispute between several employees...” turned into a full on riot. The rioting workers trashed the workshop, which called for police involvement, people hospitalized and others arrested. The same factory was closed for police investigation due to "harsh working condition, unsafe facilities and long working hours," which many say are the reasons for the suicides.
Looking Forward
Foxconn says it is trying to work on the problems, but knows there is still a lot to be done. Louis Woo, a high ranking foxconn executive said “Maybe this spate of suicides will also serve us as a wake-up call...We realize we must do a better job.” Gou said, “We are not just a factory, we take social responsibility...I think we need to change the way things are. Businesses should be focused on business and social responsibility should be government responsibility.” In order to fix this his next step is to start building city sized factories, so the local governments can take some of the social responsibility. “Authorities in Chengdu, Sichuan, have already agreed to a deal in which Gou will spend $3.5 billion over five years to build factories for component manufacturing and assembly, while the government will provide low-cost housing to his workers.” By moving inland he might have to lower wages, but hopefully this will mean less suicides because people will be closer to home, and have someone to turn to when things get hard. They can have a support group full of their love ones right there whenever they need them. Gou also wants to create Foxconn stores so they can also get in on the retail side of things, rather than just exporting everything. He is also hoping to move to the US in the near future, but is worried about the consequences this will bring.