The specific articles I posted referencing suicides were from various dates, but most referred to the events in 2010. . . with facts learned in investigation after 2010. Yes there were 2012 articles on the reported "suicide threat by 150-300 'Apple' workers", but Loonard had referred to the mass suicide threat as though it were at an Apple assembly plant as well. . . which it wasn't. . . Loonard, like the other anti-Apple trolls, including the ones in the press, plays fast and loose with the facts. The article proved this incident occurred at a plant making Micosoft X-Boxes and Acer Computers.
I posted several examples, but let's just look at ONE "faked" article, shall we?
Report: Mass Suicide Threats at Xbox 360 Plant
By Brian Ashcraft
kotaku filed to: China January 10, 2012
On Jan. 2, over 300 employees at a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China threatened to throw themselves off a building in a mass suicide. Foxconn makes Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony products. These workers manufacture Xbox 360s.
Follow the click bait money. No one cares when the headlines says "Mass suicide' protest at a Microsoft and Acer Foxconn manufacturer factory." Add "Apple" to your headline and your clicks go up. Make the article negative and the click bait is even more attractive!
Here's an example of how that gets erroneously "reported" elsewhere in the news food chain:
This is not the first time Apple has been under fire for mistreatment allegations at its supply factories. In fact, the factories have been accused of mistreatment for years. Most recently, reports surfaced that some Apple workers threatened to throw themselves off of a roof in a protest of unfair treatment. Foxconn later said the dispute was solved peacefully.—Mashable.com—February 22, 2012
And THAT'S how, with editorial legerdemain, Microsoft X-Box workers soon to be Acer workers threatening to commit suicide over working condition get magically, "Presto Chango," transformed into Apple workers, in the low information public's (and Loonard's) consciousness!
It allows Loonard to claim nonsense as facts.
Another section referred to the actual political donations by Apple and the late Steve Jobs over a ten year period. . . Steve's political donations average around $25,000 a year for the last ten years of his life. . . Granted all to Democrat candidates. . . and when his wife's donation were included, less than $75,000 per year, combined. For a couple worth multiple BILLIONS, this is pocket change. Apple itself did not even have a PAC. . . and still doesn't. And no, there is no evidence of the "wink, wink" behind the scenes help Loonard nastily implies. I linked to Loonard's own article which cited Jobs' 2004 interview in which he announced he and Apple were NOT going to be involved in politics because ". . . 50% of Apple's customers were Republicans!" Yet Loonard's position is that Apple and Steve Jobs are kingpins in getting nasty regulations passed. . . and are major donors to political races despite all evidence to the contrary. These are PUBLIC RECORDS. Two were links to articles about Apple's LACK of a presence in Washington lobbying and the fact that they often refused to participate, even when the regulations were going to impact them! Those articles links were from both a Conservative AND a Liberal sources. But Loonard claims I "faked" them. . . including Loonard's own link. LOL!
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Why was there a sudden "jump" in suicides at FoxConn facilities in 2010 and not at other companies look with far worse records?
Beginning July 2009, with the suicide of Sun Danyong, the 25 year old engineer involved in "misplacing" a prototype iPhone, who then apparently jumped from his apartment balcony—a non-FoxConn facility—FoxConn's CEO, Terry Gou, gave the families of the suicides 400,000 Yuan (~$65,500 USD) compensation for the deaths. In another article I posted, a group of psychiatrist and psychologists engaged by FoxConn analyzed the 2010 suicides with a view toward how FoxConn's monetary compensation for the victims' families may have encouraged the suicides. According to the report, Gou's magnanimous gesture turned out to be a tragic major psychological error. It turned out that it was well known among FoxConn employees and job applicants that it was financially rewarding to suicide and leave your family a windfall of lottery proportions. . . literally a lifetime's pay—41 years of non-Apple assembly line workers' pay—tax, expenses, and cost-of-living-free, for killing oneself! At least one of the 2010 suicides left behind a note indicating that now his family's financial problems would be over. Another had been employed less than three weeks and had worked only two hours of overtime. The psychiatric consensus was that suicidal impulses could NOT have developed from work related depression after such a short time and that this "victim" most likely "sought employment at FoxConn for the sole purpose of killing himself and enriching his family."
After being shown the analysis by the team of psychologists and psychiatrists, Guo announced that FoxConn would henceforth pay only the government required "accidental" employee death benefit of 10,000 Yuan (~$1600 USD) to any future suicide, the suicides and attempted suicides suddenly dropped to only a handful a year: There were only two suicides at all of FoxConn in 2011 (see note), just one in 2012, and two in 2013. Three of those later suicides left notes indicating either homesickness or personal issues.
Why was there a spurt in 2010 in suicides at FoxConn and not at other worse run and far worse working condition companies? Follow the money!
(Note: two additional suicides in 2011 were attributed to FoxConn in some news reports even though one of them killed herself after several weeks in a government mental facility, and the other was an ex-employee who did the deed after quitting and returning to his home village. Why the sudden drop in the FoxConn suicides? )
Yet another section, gleaned from the other articles posted, compared the dichotomy in pay between the pay workers on Apple product FoxConn assembly lines at 2000 Yuan ($345 USD) per month to the other makers' FoxConn assembly lines at 900 Yuan ($132 USD) per month, demonstrating why there might be worker frustration and jealousy that might lead to problems. . . and an article AND LINK showing that FoxConn is planning to raise wages to $650 USD for all workers by the end of 2013 reducing their profit margin to 4%. Again, Loonard claims I'm "faking" that.
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Funny thing, Microsoft has some of their X-Boxes built by company other than FoxConn. That company is KYE Systems, which IS one of those companies, mentioned above, whose management which is far worse in working conditions!
Where is Loonard on these condition? Where was Microsoft? Where is Microsoft's Code of Conduct for Suppliers?
By Nick Eaton
Excerpted from Seattle Post Intellegencer — April 13, 2010Labor group: Chinese teens ‘like prisoners’ in Microsoft tech factory
Thousands of Chinese teens and young adults work 15 hours a day at 65 cents per hour, prohibited from talking or listening to music, in abysmal conditions at the KYE Systems factory where they assemble Microsoft hardware that is exported to the United States, Europe and Japan.
So reports the National Labor Committee, which on Tuesday released the culmination of three years of incognito interviews and photography inside the infamous Dongguan, China, gadget factories. Though Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, it accounts for about 30 percent of the factory’s work, the NLC said.
“We are like prisoners,” one worker told the NLC. “It seems like we live only to work. We do not work to live. We do not live a life, only work.”
Microsoft said it is taking the claims seriously and has “commenced an investigation.”
The workers – mostly women aged 18 to 25 – work from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. They eat horrid meals from the factory cafeterias. They have no bathroom breaks during their shifts, and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
They sleep in factory dormitories, 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28-inch-wide plywood boards. They “shower” with a sponge and a bucket. And many of the workers, because they’re young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC alleges.
Where is Loonard's outrage at Microsoft? What did Steve Balmer do about the sexual harassment of teenage girls at Microsoft's factory? Isn't Loonard offended by Microsoft cramming twice as many people into dorm rooms as FoxConn does? How can Steve Ballmer countenance paying Microsoft's workers only HALF of the starting pay that FoxConn pays for the same work, less than one-sixth the pay FoxConn pays workers on their Apple lines, require them to work longer hours without overtime pay. . . but does ANYBODY hear about this??? Why isn't Loonard demanding Steve Balmer self-immolate over Microsoft's factory's abysmal practices? Where are the headlines? Where are the suicides???
Oh, did I mention that KYE dormitory pictures have been used as photo "stand-ins" for many "FoxConn dormitory" pictures in Internet Blogs? You can still find some labeled as such.
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Loonard, thinks that all the FoxConn workers who killed themselves were somehow only associated with Apple, despite tons of evidence to the contrary.
FoxConn's customer list.As of January 2012, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.'s subsidiary FoxConn Technology Group assembles approximately 40% of the consumer electronics in the world according to numerous sources including Wikipedia and the New York Times. Here is a partial list of 50 of FoxConn's customers I've been able to compile from news articles where their contractural relationships were mentioned over the past five years, which include the period when the suicides occurred:
- Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
- Alcatel (France)
- Amazon (United States)
- Apple Inc. (United States)
- Archos (France)
- ASRock (Taiwan)
- Asus (Taiwan)
- Barnes & Noble (United States)
- BenQ (South Korea)
- Blackberry (Canada)
- Cisco (United States)
- Dell Inc.(United States)
- EVGA Corporation (United States)
- Fujitsu (Japan)
- GE Thomson
- Google (United States)
- Griffin Technologies (United States)
- Gründig Mobile (Germany)
- Hewlett-Packard (United States)
- HTC (Taiwan)
- Huawei (China)
- Intel (United States)
- IBM (United States)
- Kyocera Communications (Japan)
- Lenovo (China)
- Lenovo/Motorola Mobility (China)
- LG Lucky GoldStar (South Korea)
- Microsoft (United States)
- Microsoft MSI (Taiwan)
- Motorola Communications (United States)
- NCR (United States)
- NEC Casio Communication (Japan)
- Netgear (United States)
- Nintendo (Japan)
- Nokia Oyj (Finland)
- PackardBell (Netherlands)
- Panasonic (Japan)
- Philips (Netherlands)
- Pioneer Electronics (Japan)
- Samsung (South Korea)
- Sanyo (Japan)
- Sharp (Japan)
- Siemens (Germany)
- Sony (Japan)
- TCL Communication Technology (China)
- Telefunken (Germany)
- Thomson (France)
- Toshiba (Japan)
- Vizio (United States)
- Xiaomi (China)
- Zoostorm (New Zealand)
- ZTE (China)
Loonard would have you believe that Apple built and owns the means of production, hires all the employees, and then manages and sets the policies and working conditions for the employees who manufacture and assemble ALL these companies' products. . . and must be held COMPLETELY responsible if anything goes wrong, if anything does not meet total perfection according to LoonardLogic (Tm) standards.
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While I'm on a roll, let me slay one more Loonard dragon.
Loonard keeps yawping about all the "teenage kids killing themselves in Apple's factories," implying that we should assume that all the "victims" are youngster, minors. I think we can all agree that "teenage" is well defined as 13 to 19 years of age, can we not? Adulthood in most modern cultures is considered to be reached at age 18, with anything younger being defined as still a child, a "kid."
Unfortunately for Loonard's distortions of reality, facts are again rearing their disturbing heads.
You see, of the 23 attempted and successful suicide attempts at FoxConn from 2009 through 2013, only SIX involved persons who could be defined as "teenage," and only ONE, a month shy of her 17th birthday, could be defined as a child, a kid—who survived, although paralyzed from the waist down. Specifically, the 19 suicides and attemptees ranged in age from 17 to 28, average age was a little less than 23 years old. The most common age for a worker to attempt suicide at FoxConn is 23 with four. Three each were in the 18, 19, 21, 24, and 25 years old categories. There were two 20 year olds, the one 28 year old and the one 17 year old who failed to kill herself. Oops, no "teenaged kids killing themselves." Loonard was distorting, spouting hyperbole, spreading PROPAGANDA! FUD! Of course, he will say I "faked" this all up. Delicious!