Sometimes I Hate The News

Sometimes I really hate news reports. In the past couple of months I've seen numerous reports on the "alarming number of suicides at Foxconn". Foxconn is a Chinese company that makes electronics for big name corporations (Apple, Dell, Sony, HP, Amazon, and others) and the headlines have read "Another suicide at Foxconn!", and "10th Foxconn employee this year takes own life!" The body of the reports then claim that Foxconn is a terrible, awful place that we should boycott or otherwise hold responsible the corporations that use Foxconn to assemble their products, etc.

Here's the problem, Foxconn is an incredible company (though don't take that to mean they're perfect, the company is run by imperfect humans after all) and these articles are risking the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, not to mention all of those around the world invested in and employed by the companies that contract out to Foxconn.

Do I sound callous? That's what the articles are banking on - emotional reactions, I mean who could possibly support suicides? Not me. Hopefully not anyone else. I do however support facts. Facts such as these:

- Foxconn employs 486,000 people (to give scope, Salt Lake City has a population of about 182,000 - so Foxconn employs 2.7 Salt Lake Cities).
- In the first 5 months of 2010 there have been 10 suicides committed by Foxconn employees.
- That means that Foxconn has an annual suicide rate of 4.9 per 100,000 people
- In comparison the average suicide rate for China as a whole is 13.9 per 100k (that means Foxconn, as a sub-population of China, has cut the rate of suicides by 65%)
- In other countries (per 100k): Japan: 24.4; Switzerland: 17.5, France: 17.0, Sweden: 13.3, New Zealand: 13.2, Canada: 11.6, United States: 11.1, Australia: 10.9, U.K.: 6.8

In other words this company that is taking the wrath of the media (and many who follow the media) has a better suicide rate (by far!) than countries we consider great places to live.

On another positive note, the media firestorm is getting Foxconn to implement various methods to attempt to reduce that number even further, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, this isn't the only thing people in the media want.

What people are calling for is increased wages and better living/working conditions for Foxconn workers. I disagree. Do I sound callous again? Give me a chance to explain.

Apple recently released the iPad, which Foxconn helps to build. The base iPad model is priced at $500. Because of that price, Apple sold 1 million iPads in the first 28 days. If Foxconn paid it's employees more (who currently make at least 4 times as much as the average rural Chinese, plus have their room and board included), Foxconn would have to charge Apple more. If Foxconn charges Apple more, Apple will charge customers more. If iPads (and other electronics) cost more, people will buy less of them. If people buy less electronics then Foxconn will not be able to employ as many workers and all of those workers who are let go will have their salary cut by at least 75% and their living conditions diminished considerably.

It's common sense that only becomes common when the facts are all laid out - something that most of the media fails to do because "Foxconn creates relatively good conditions for workers" is never going to catch as many eyes as "Foxconn deaths are everywhere!!!"

Any time someone says that we should close the sweatshops or the "awful" factories in China, think twice. If the working conditions are THAT bad, people will stop working at a company, but generally speaking a job in a sweatshop that pays $60 a month (less than half of what Foxconn pays) is better than the $30 a month they can expect elsewhere ($30/month is the average salary in rural China).

Do I wish Chinese workers had better jobs and better lives, sure! Do I wish the suicide rate was 0/100k, sure! But if our goal is a better life for these workers, then creating a crisis where none exists resulting in them LOSING their jobs is downright immoral.

The real answer, if you want to make the lives of Chinese workers better, is to buy more Chinese products. You buy more products, more Chinese workers can get 'good' jobs. Also, support education in China (and other countries); people are taking these $60-$120/month jobs because it's either that or work in the fields for $10-$30/month. If they had better educations they could become more productive and command higher salaries. But don't by any means boycott companies and cost these poor people their jobs.


(By the way, this rant was brought to you as a result of me being stuck in Costa Rica - where the poverty is also heartbreaking - with nothing to do for a few hours, and no good way to let off steam to Erin instead of the blogosphere.)

Labels: computers, politics

posted by Brett at 8:51 PM