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Introduction
Foxconn Company is a subsidiary company of Hon Hai Precision Company of Taiwan. It mainly manufactures electronic devices and equipments. In current times, it is the largest manufacturer of electronics worldwide.
Answer to question 1
During the first half of 2010, it was found that many Foxconn employees were not happy with the working conditions. This made them frustrated at times. So they decided to kill themselves by jumping off from the 15 storey buildings (Christos, 2015). A report suggests that 2 more employees have been brutally injured while 20 have been saved from doing so. Their plans were ruled out by the management to stop this suicide attempts. The major reason behind this suicide attempts was due to verbal abuses from the superiors and military style drills at the assembly line. Therefore, the need of stopping these suicides increased too which Foxconn has responded well. Foxconn has tried to stop the future suicide programs in an efficient manner. They brought in new policies, started to pay more attention to the workers and were paying more wages (Christos, 2015). Further, they were providing more emotional support to them so that they become emotionally stronger and fight for their survival. They have started to surround the building with nets, hire counselors for employees who were at stress and assigning maximum works as group work. This group work helped quite a lot as employees could keep an eye on another in order to reduce the stress level and to increase the will power for better emotional support. The response from Foxconn was not up to the mark as they had a short term initiative which eradicated the problems for the time being but could not find any root cause of the problems so that problems could be avoided in the near future. For instance, surrounding the building with nets could stop the suicide attempts for the time being, but they would easily find another way to attempt suicide. In addition to this, the organizational culture of Foxconn is bit herd in nature where employees have a herd mentality.. This means that employees are influenced by other employees behaviors, i.e. the way they talk, and speak. Further, they lose the decision making habit also and also losses the ability to tackle the problems too (Pun et al., 2016). Thus, it can be suggested for Foxconn that the employees should get more human rights through improving the working condition, and increase the wage rate. It should be kept in mind that employees are the biggest strengths for a company and without loyal employees, there would be no business.
Answer to question 2
Through the deals with India and Japan, they can be bit ethical as they could deal with the increased labor cost and reduce the cost they are incurring in many other forms. The deals with Japan and India could make them a bit ethical (Waters, 2017). This is mainly because of the fact that if Foxconn adapts to what they are doing in China, i.e. providing food, lodging, and other things. Additionally, the site at Shenzhen has its own restaurants, stores, banks, etc that helps the employees to have a better standard to living out there. These things make the employees more committed to working as they get things that are needed in daily without any problem. Therefore, it can be observed that China and India deal would make them bit ethical if they start to follow the Chinese model. For this, they need to pay more attention to the company’s money for the development of the employee rather than spending it on other things which are not that important. They should focus on labor safety and provide them with better job security (Lüthje & Butollo, 2017).
Answer to question 3
Foxconn Company must be responded actively as it is a serious issue in an organisation, If an employee commits suicide, it brings down the value of the company. Moreover, it is necessary for the company to apply ethical policies to stop such acts which can be occurred in future events. It is clear as water that such ethical policies have not applied by Foxconn Company as many employees have committed suicide (Pun et al., 2016). The company pressurizes the employees to work for almost 14 consecutive days without any break and the employees have been allotted a huge work load by the company that they cannot do in the given period of time. And that leads them to get rid of such workloads with no choice but to commit suicide. The culture of company resembles a lot like pack mentality (Fordyce & van Ryn, 2014). In pack mentality, the employees have to go under peer pressure. However, Foxconn does not apply moral ethics until some serious situation occurs. Until and unless, the employees commit suicide or media criticizes the company, the company does not improve its ethic standards. The company only thinks about its employees when media exposes the treatment of the company towards its employees. It is so unfortunate to find that many companies still mistreat with their employees until the media exposes their faults and wrongful practices and standards. There is a need of improvement in proactive ethics in every company.
Answer to question 4
Factories and workshops are very common in China, a huge part of overall goods from different countries of the world manufactured there. As per statements of the workers of the factories in China, it has been found that working conditions are horrible in China’s factories. The employers pressurize them by providing huge loads of work to be completed at a short period of time (Waters, 2015). They have stated that it is nearly impossible to survive in such situations where the people lives are so awful. They are not getting proper food to eat, the surroundings are dirty and the employees live in one single room with scanty space. The food is not good only but the working areas are not well cleaned (Zhao et al., 2017). Foxconn factories have worst working conditions and environments than any other factories in China. The employees have to work for hours in long shifts to sitting in one place to make parts of Iphones and they assemble those parts there only. Apple Company does not provide facilities to their workers working in Foxconn Company in China (Sandoval, 2015). Sometimes, the employees have to work for extra hours by expanding their shifts when there is an urgency required by the employers. For every extra hours that they have worked, the employers pay them a poor wage or salary. Foxconn does not maintain a proper health policy for their young workers. The employees have to work with that bad health for hours, as the company gives first priority to the work in factories and then to the employees (Müller, 2016). Many employees could not deal with these conditions and have committed suicide just because they were not able to handle such loads of work in a short span of time, dirty working area and abuses from the employers.
Conclusion
The study shows the inhuman behaviour of Foxconn Company and its irresponsibility towards its workers and employees. It represents the entire proactive ethics and standards which should be followed by the company for the betterment of the employees. The immoral standards and practices that Foxconn follows has been stated in detail in this study.
Reference
Christos, K. (2015). Foxconnian culture: An operational crisis abetted suicides. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175, 447-454.
Fordyce, R., & van Ryn, L. (2014). Ethical commodities as exodus and refusal.
Lüthje, B., & Butollo, F. (2017). Why the Foxconn model does not die: Production networks and labour relations in the IT industry in South China. Globalizations, 14(2), 216-231.
Müller, W. (2016). Foxconn economics: how much room for better pay and working conditions?. Flexible workforces and low profit margins: electronics assembly between Europe and China , 155.
Pun, N., Shen, Y., Guo, Y., Lu, H., Chan, J., & Selden, M. (2016). Apple, Foxconn, and Chinese workers’ struggles from a global labor perspective. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 17(2), 166-185.
Pun, N., Shen, Y., Guo, Y., Lu, H., Chan, J., & Selden, M. (2016). Apple, Foxconn, and Chinese workers’ struggles from a global labor perspective. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 17(2), 166-185.
Pun, N., Tse, T., & Ng, K. (2017). Challenging digital capitalism: SACOM's campaigns against Apple and Foxconn as monopoly capital. Information, Communication & Society, 1-16.
Sandoval, M. (2015). Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple’s Contract Manufacturers in China. Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism, 350.
Waters, S. (2015). Suicide as protest in the French workplace. Modern & Contemporary France, 23(4), 491-510.
Waters, S. (2017). Workplace Suicide and States of Denial: The France Telecom and Foxconn Cases Compared. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society , 15(1), 191-213.
Waters, S. (2017). Workplace Suicide and States of Denial: The France Telecom and Foxconn Cases Compared. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society , 15(1), 191-213.
Zhao, F., Tang, Y., & Gan, Y. (2017, July). Reanalysis of Foxconn Incident Based On the Perspective of Group Dynamics Theory. In 2017 3rd International Conference on Economics, Social Science, Arts, Education and Management Engineering (ESSAEME 2017) . Atlantis Press.
