Source:
The Wall Street Journal.Apple Inc., Dell Inc. and other electronics companies said they are examining the response by major supplier Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. to a wave of employee suicides that has drawn unprecedented scrutiny on the Asia manufacturing giant and highlighted the changing nature of China's manufacturing workforce.
The tech companies' investigations came as Hon Hai and its hard-charging chairman, Terry Gou, moved to contain the widening fallout from the spate of employee deaths. Nine employees at Hon Hai's giant Longhua complex in the southern city of Shenzhen have jumped to their deaths this year, most since April, with two more injured in failed attempts.
....
"These last two months, I've been afraid to answer the phone late at night or early in the morning, because we've been unable to prevent these incidents from happening," the 59-year-old Mr. Gou told reporters at the Longhua campus, a collection of tree-lined streets, numbered factory buildings and worker dormitories. He expressed "regret" over the incidents, but defended Hon Hai's response. "We need time. But we have confidence and strong determination" to address the problem, he said.
The statements Wednesday from Apple, Dell and others were the first public comment on the suicides by customers of Hon Hai, which also goes by the trade name Foxconn. The Taiwan-based company, which Mr. Gou founded in 1974, is the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer by revenue, assembling iPads and MacBooks for Apple as well as other gadgets and personal computers for brands like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Nokia Corp.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575267603576594936.html?mod=wsj_india_main
There are a few listers here who get annoyed every time I link to an article in
The Wall Street Journal. Here's their chance to be annoyed again.
It's an outstanding newspaper.