Hmm just to put this story into a little perspective from personal experience. Chinese factory workers don't have any concept of quality or performance. All they know is repetition, to sit at their station and assemble or prepare the components as they are told, and that is all they WANT to know. The only way to get a high-precision final product out of a Chinese factory is to in-build foolproof methods, statistical calibration, scheduled inspection of machines, contractual agreements about engineering CTQ's and part rejects, and rigorous testing. I mean rigorous. Being as an iPhone is probably one of the highest-precision assembly consumer devices there are, you can bet that Foxconn has done all of this and more. This is no dirt-floor factory with malnourished children, especially if they are referencing the Longhua location in Shenzhen. Chinese workers are paid a state-mandated wage, and factories must provide housing and meals for the workers. There are thousands of factories in Shenzhen, and if the work is so suicidal, the workers would just simply leave. It is a well known fact that after Chinese New Year holiday, many workers just simply do not return. If these workers are so unhappy, and supposedly suicidal, about the 'work conditions', then maybe it is because of the exacting manufacturing and assembly standards put forth by Apple. What I see when I read stories like this, is, the workers had never done it this way before, and why isn't the old way good enough? They are being held to task, no doubt, for a very high-precision little device that must be 100% when it ships to worldwide customers. And they don't like it. Yes, Foxconn has a reputation even in China as a high-pressure place to work. But blame the low bar set by every other Chinese factory before pointing the finger at Foxconn per-se. Can guarantee there are 10,000 worse places to work than Foxconn, but those don't fuel a news media narrative.
Fail / MSM