Foxconn worker jumps to death in China, the 10th suicide this year at iPod maker

Foxconn worker dies in China; 10th in a year

GUANGZHOU, China — A Chinese employee of Foxconn Technology Group fell from a building and died Tuesday, state-run media said, in the 10th such death this year at the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, such as the iPod, Dell computers and Nokia phones.

Police have yet to determine if the 19-year-old worker committed suicide, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Foxconn did not immediately provide other details about the male employee.

The death is the ninth at Foxconn’s massive plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, which employs more than 300,000 people. Two other workers have tried to kill themselves by jumping from buildings in Shenzhen but they survived. Another suicide occurred at a smaller plant in northern Hebei province in January.

Labor activists say the string of suicides back up their long-standing allegations that workers toil in terrible conditions at Foxconn. They claim shifts are long, the assembly line moves too fast and managers enforce military-style discipline on the workforce.

But Foxconn has insisted that workers are treated well and are protected by social responsibility programs that ensure their welfare. The Shenzhen factory is perennially a popular place to work, with hordes of applicants lining up for jobs during the hiring season.

On Monday, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou told reporters, “We are certainly not running a sweatshop. We are confident we’ll be able to stabilize the situation soon.”

Tuesday’s reported death came just three days after a 21-year-old man who worked in the logistics department jumped from a four-story building shortly after finishing the night shift Friday. His motivations were still not known.

The highest-profile Foxconn death happened last July when Sun Danyong, 25, jumped to his death after being interrogated over a missing iPhone prototype.

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Associated Press writer Debby Wu in Taipei and researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.