Another death at iPhone factory

The huge Chinese factory that is the world’s largest contract maker of electronics which makes iPhones and iPads has suffered another fatality, the eight this year. The worker who has been identified as Nan Gang, 21 fell to his death, although it is not clear what caused this most recent death, the previous death at the Foxconn Technology Group plant which is in the southern town of Shenzhen were deemed suicides.

This latest death will add fuel to the fair of labour activists who allege Foxconn has a long history of mistreatment of workers and poor working conditions. They claim that the 300,000 employees face tremendous pressure in their working conditions and are pushed hard they also claim that any employees who make mistakes face harsh discipline.

Foxconn, who are owned by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry group are yet to make any comment about the death, however after a suicide earlier this month the company said “our workers enjoy world-class treatment, including social responsibility programmes to ensure their welfare.”

The company also produce mobile phones for Nokia, Playstation consoles for Sony and computers for Hewlett-Packard, the most high profile death at the factory happened last July, when Sun Danyong, 25, jumped to his death. He had previously been interrogated over an iPhone prototype that had gone missing, he was responsible for sending the device to US-based Apple.