
Foxconn to shutter China factories - chris24
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/10/foxconn_restructuring/
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jimfl
Unbelievably bizarre that high profile news of suicides at a rate smaller then
the demographic norm in China results in the loss of 800,000 jobs.

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andreyf
That's what we call a powerful meme :)

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dreyfiz
This news is almost certainly false.

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kqr2
A sign of great reporting:

    
    
      This news comes by way of the Chinese-language news site
      ON.CC — a Google translation is available here — and 
      couldn't immediately be independently verified.

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megablast
Yes, that is actually a sign of good reporting. Most news sites would not tell
you that they had not verified this message, they would just publish it as
truth. It also may indicate that they tried to verify it.

Of course, they could have decided to hold onto the story, until it was
verified, but in the online world, news travels fast.

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jarin
I honestly don't blame them. They either have the choice to increase costs by
30% because of media pressure or decrease costs and media attention by moving
to a cheaper country where people aren't as prone to jumping off of roofs.

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manvsmachine
Not asking this to be sarcastic: what cheaper country? I can't immediately
come up with any industrialized nations capable of supporting large-scale
electronics manufacturing that would have _lower_ wages than China.

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jarin
According to the article, they're considering Taiwan, Vietnam, and India.

Taiwan has a ton of electronics manufacturing, and Vietnam and India both have
industrialized coastal towns.

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mark_l_watson
I doubt the story. BTW, I was flying back from a work day in San Jose last
Friday, and the fellow sitting next to me on the airplane mentioned both that
his company makes iPad parts and that they have had problems with suicides in
their China factories. Probably the same company?

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chaosmachine
Doesn't make sense. Announce a 30% raise in wages, then a week later announce
that everyone is fired?

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ars
Makes a ton on sense.

Announce the wage increase because you are forced to. Then realize that you
are no longer competitive and are loosing business. Now your only choice is to
lay people off.

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megablast
What doesn't make sense is the incredibly huge task of moving all that work to
somewhere else, as well as leaving an area that you have setup to handle such
a huge amount of work.

If this is true, it is just in the planning stages for years down the track,
or they have been planning this for a long time.

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stretchwithme
hmm, I see that they have suspended their death benefit to discourage suicide.
maybe death benefits shouldn't cover suicide at all

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sliverstorm
That would probably wind up with some pretty horrific situations. It's not
always clear if a death was a suicide. Combine ambiguity with LARGE sums of
money...

