Spectre of suicide returns to Apple-contractor Foxconn
The spectre of suicide has returned to Foxconn, with a 25-year-old female employee jumping to her death after she allegedly received a harsh dressing down and was told to resign.
Wang Ling, who had worked in an engineering department of Foxconn Technology Group since 2005, died on Friday morning after jumping from her brother's 10th-floor flat in Shenzhen's Yantian district.
The world's largest electronics manufacturing services provider, Foxconn makes devices including Apple's iPod. The group employs more than a million in China.
Her brother, Wang Chunfeng, said yesterday she had received a company e-mail in her office at Foxconn's Longhua plant last Tuesday morning that told her to resign. 'My sister said a Taiwanese supervisor had harshly criticised her - or you can call it an insult - when she tried to find out more about why she was being asked to quit,' he said.
'She was sent to the Shenzhen Kangning psychiatric hospital that afternoon by Foxconn, which called us in the evening to take her back from the dormitory.' Wang Chunfeng said his sister had a further consultation with psychiatrists at the hospital last Wednesday, before returning to her dormitory and staying overnight. The psychiatrists diagnosed her as schizophrenic.
'On Thursday her line manager insisted on sending her back to us, saying, 'Wang Ling is exhibiting a lot of abnormal behaviour', and suggesting we send her back to her hometown in Hubei province for further treatment,' the brother said. He said Foxconn had promised to keep his sister's position open and let her resume work within three months if she recovered. Less than 24 hours later, Wang Ling jumped to her death.
An officer at Haishan police station, which investigated her death, confirmed she had committed suicide and was a Foxconn employee. 'We eliminated the possibility that she was murdered,' he said.
Although Wang Ling's family said they had talked to Foxconn several times after her death and tried to find out more, Burson-Marsteller, a public-relations firm representing Foxconn, told the South China Morning Post: 'We have no report of the involvement of any Foxconn employee in any such tragic incident.'
Sister-in-law Yang Linying said in tears: 'We wanted to find out why my sister, a healthy and happy university graduate, committed suicide.' Yang said Wang Ling had not left a letter and Foxconn had not allowed family members to check her office computer.
'We were kept in the darkness during the five years,' she said.
'Wang only poured out her grievances that she suffered lots of pressure from her job, saying many employees there jumped to their death and the factory was forced to hire a huge number of psychologists to detect people who had signs of mental problems.
'She told me that she had been identified and required to undergo a detailed psychiatric test with hundreds of questions. But before she worked for Foxconn, she was perfectly OK in terms of mental health.'
An 83-page research report released last October produced by 20 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland found that at least 17 Foxconn workers had attempted to commit suicide - of whom13 died - since January last year.
In November, another Foxconn employee, in his early 20s, who had worked for the company for eight months plunged to his death.
The family called Wang Ling's supervisor after her death, Yang said, 'but the man said: 'I don't have any responsibility, and nor does the company'. We believe this goes against basic conscience when an employer drives away a sick worker with no compassion.
'The night before Wang jumped to her death, she told me: 'Sister, I need a mental doctor'.'
