Foxconn builds a lot more than iPhones. Take a look at all their customers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers If you own computer equipment or a smart phone, there's a pretty good chance that something that you own was made at Foxconn.
And that's partly why it wouldn't matter. People generally connect Foxconn with Apple stuff, and will then boycott by buying other computing products that are also manufactured by Foxconn.
Considering how much was already known about the working conditions as well as suicides at Foxconn, it hasn't slowed down sales. I'm sure a mass suicide would get more media attention, but who knows how it would actually affect their bottom line.
you just gave me a great idea for a movie plot. "Blood Smartphone". A movie about Chinese family working in FoxConn and struggling through live; lots of blood, tears, sweat, abuse, poverty and death. And at the end, a dumb american teenager with bracelets buying an iPhone and downloading Angry Birds and Plants versus Zombie all happy and excited.
I can see the transition shot already: a SnorriCam (one of those cool mounted cameras) following the smartphone down the assembly line, past the family, in dingy blue factory lighting. It loads into a box, onto a truck, into a shipping container, over the ocean, unloaded, and finally in a cheery white and shiny Apple store. The teenager convincing his parents to purchase the phone says "but everyone else my age has one!" The camera then cuts back to the Foxconn factory, where a younger member of the assembly-line family stares bleakly into the camera.
All the photos I've seen of the factories in question are as well-lit as American factories. The working conditions are poor, but they're far better than what early American and British workers endured during the industrial revolution.
Also, such a film would only be complete if it documented the nerve and joint damage caused to American vinyl and PVC manufacturers not given proper ventilation. Would you listen to a blood record, or defecate in a blood sewer pipe?
That's pretty funny, because last time I checked, films were considered art and used to tell whatever story the writers and directors want to tell. Good luck finding a "complete" film to your standards.
love it!! I would change the teen line though: "thank you, daddy! you really, really love me!!"
and would make the ending more tragic. this young member could simply have a bad day etc so him staring bleakly into the camera wouldnt affect me much. how about the plot is about parents who (at the beginning) lost their child that commit suicide cause working 19 hours a day was bit too much, and at the end from overprivilaged, undereducated spoiled teenager camera cuts back to mom and dad hand by hand jumping from a factory roof.
i think that would do it.
Most people would. It's one thing to switch registrars and get exactly the same thing as you had before. It's quite another thing not to have your smartphone at all. How would you check in?
How many suicides would it take before Foxconn is out of business? 1, 10, 1000, .... ? . People already know of dozens or so suicides that have taken place in Foxconn. If people kept on buying stuff regardless, what difference would more suicides make?
Call me cynical, but everyone loves cheap products much more than far removed suicides of random people half way across the globe.
Call me cynical as well, but I can't help but think of how many people competing for those jobs see the suicides as job openings.
Simply, the working conditions might be extra bad at FoxConn, but they're bad everywhere else in the general area. The wealth of cheap workers who are willing to work in horrible conditions for pay is still great, and it would take a LOT more suicides than Foxconn has employees for that situation to change for the better. I think.
