Another Foxconn Worker Plunges to His Death

A young migrant worker fell to his death at Foxconn Technology Group’s Shenzhen manufacturing plant, reported local media Wednesday. The worker is thought to be another suicide in a long series of suicides at Foxconn factories the past two years.

The 21-year-old worker fell from the sixth floor of a factory dormitory in Shenzhen, according to the Hong Kong Economic Times. Last year alone over a dozen Foxconn workers committed suicide, all of them young migrant workers living in company dorms.

While the cause of many suicides was deemed to have been pressure from overwork, the latest suicide is seen as having other causes. The worker had signed on as an assistant last month and had accured only two hours of overtime.

Last year’s suicides and worker protests had forced Foxconn to make major changes in its business model, including locating more of its numerous manufacturing complexes further inland, closer to the homes of its migrant workers. It also raised wages, improved working conditions, reduced overtime demands and booster the number of counselors available to workers.

Foxconn Technology Group is best known as the OEM for the Apple iPhone due to a high-profile suicide linked to a lost prototype. As Taiwan’s biggest and most successful consumer-electronics OEM, Foxconn makes products for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia and Sony Ericsson and other global firms. Its subsidiaries include Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd , Foxconn Technology and Foxconn International Holdings.