Foxconn have a strong incentive to avoid employing employees likely to commit suicide, or alternatively to sack at-risk employees.
So suicide rate can't be used as a proxy for measuring employee conditions.
I was going to suggest that the lower rate could be due to having more female workers, since far more men then women commit suicide BUT it turns out that in China this is not the case (in US studies they measure that women try a lot but don't succeed at the same rate - cause of that is contentious argument - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_suicide).
To answer main thread, the article does include a bunch of bollocks (my favorite bit is where they try to shock us with the half-life of Uranium), but the core of the article seems to be probably valid.
Aside: why is it so common that eco-articles (or eco-movies) ruin their core theme by adding outrageous bollocks?
> So suicide rate can't be used as a proxy for measuring employee conditions.
Except everyone mentions the Foxconn Suicides as a major problem. Giving actual numbers is a way to remedy that specific bit of untruth.
> my favorite bit is where they try to shock us with the half-life of Uranium
For the people who don't know: Long half-life means lower radiation over any given period. The really hot stuff, the stuff that throws off a lot of radiation per second, doesn't last long precisely because it's throwing away so much energy to get to a more stable state. Isotopes that stick around longer do so because they're more stable, and so have less energy to throw away every second.
So suicide rate can't be used as a proxy for measuring employee conditions.
I was going to suggest that the lower rate could be due to having more female workers, since far more men then women commit suicide BUT it turns out that in China this is not the case (in US studies they measure that women try a lot but don't succeed at the same rate - cause of that is contentious argument - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_suicide).
To answer main thread, the article does include a bunch of bollocks (my favorite bit is where they try to shock us with the half-life of Uranium), but the core of the article seems to be probably valid.
Aside: why is it so common that eco-articles (or eco-movies) ruin their core theme by adding outrageous bollocks?