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Codebreaker

Foxconn workers made to sign anti-suicide pledges

John Moe May 6, 2011

Foxconn is the huge manufacturing company in China that employs hundreds of thousands of young Chinese workers to assemble just about every personal electronics item you’ve ever heard of. A new report paints a pretty bleak picture of life for the workers there. After a series of suicides there last year, Foxconn now requires workers to sign a pledge saying they will not commit suicide. And that if they broke that pledge, their families would only be entitled to minimal compensation. The report also said that overtime was kind of out of control. One worker had logged 98 hours of overtime in a month. And during peak times of iPad demand, workers were only allowed one day off out of 13.

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