[thaumaturgy]

> They shouldn't be at a rate that's over 50% of the total suicide rate.

Why not?

I'm not familiar with Chinese culture -- can you explain why working at a factory should drop a person's odds of suicide to an arbitrary number less than 50% of the national average?

[TomOfTTB]

Because having a job at Foxconn is the equivalent of being rich there. You have air conditioning and in door plumbing. Foxconn workers make 2,000 renminbi (after Foxconn doubled their salary to stop the suicides). That's 3 times what a normal person with a job in makes in China.

This would be like a cluster of Facebook or Google employees committing suicide in the U.S.

[thaumaturgy]

To be fair to your argument, everything I've read so far about working conditions at Foxconn would be considered close to slave labor in the U.S. ... so yes, there certainly is room for improvement there, and yes, Apple as a major customer could have some influence over the working conditions there if they wanted.

However, it's also worth considering that good mental health isn't likely to lead to suicide even in difficult working conditions; that depression, the number one cause of suicide [1], is a mental health problem whose treatment might or might not be within the realm of a company's ability to handle; and that even Disneyland in Paris has trouble with employee suicides. [2] Although, again, to be fair to you, that article leads right away by saying that the employees there have been complaining about poor working conditions.

Finally, there are cultural considerations. What are considered terrible work conditions by American standards might not be so horrible when viewed by Chinese standards, just as American work ethics are seen as 20th century by other countries.

[1]: http://www.suicide.org/depression-and-suicide.html

[2]: http://thedisneyblog.com/2011/02/04/fourth-disneyland-paris-...

[glhaynes]

How strongly does being rich tend to correlate with a reduced suicide rate?

[ceejayoz]

So your contention is that they're killing themselves because they're rich and comfortable?