18 Foxconn Workers Tried to Kill Themselves in 2010. The Company's First Fix Was a Net.

In 2010, at least 18 workers at Foxconn's Chinese manufacturing campuses attempted suicide, most by jumping from dormitory buildings; 14 of them died. The primary site was Foxconn City in Longhua, Shenzhen, a walled complex of factories, dormitories, and its own hospital and fire brigade that housed roughly 230,000 to 450,000 workers assembling iPhones, iPads, and components for Apple, Dell, HP, and other brands. Foxconn's first major countermeasure, announced within weeks, was not a reduction in mandatory overtime. It was netting, installed around dormitory buildings to catch people before they hit the ground.

The company did also raise wages, twice, in the space of a few months. It hired counselors and opened a hotline. And, according to a memo first reported by Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis Daily and widely covered by international outlets in 2011, it asked new hires to sign a pledge promising not to attempt suicide — and, more specifically, agreeing that if they did, their families would not seek compensation beyond the legal minimum, "so that the company's reputation would not be ruined and its operation remains stable." Foxconn withdrew the pledge after the coverage prompted public backlash.

The Numbers

• Between January and November 2010, at least 18 Foxconn workers attempted suicide; 14 died, nearly all by jumping from factory or dormitory buildings at the Shenzhen campus, with isolated cases at other China sites.
• Most were young migrant workers in their late teens or early twenties, many employed at Foxconn for less than a year.
• A 2010 survey of Foxconn employees found average monthly overtime of roughly 83 hours — more than double the 36-hour monthly overtime cap set by Chinese labor law.
• Foxconn's Shenzhen base alone employed an estimated 230,000–450,000 workers at the time, part of a Chinese workforce that peaked above one million.
• Base pay before the 2010 raises was about 900 yuan (roughly $132) a month.

The Response: Nets, Then Raises

Foxconn began stringing anti-suicide nets across the lower floors of dormitory and factory buildings at Longhua and its Guanlan campus in May 2010, a measure founder Terry Gou said would be extended company-wide. The nets became the crisis's defining image: a physical barrier added to buildings housing tens of thousands of people, addressing the fall rather than what preceded it.

Pay raises followed on a separate track. In late May/early June 2010, Foxconn announced an across-the-board 30 percent raise. In October, it added a second, performance-conditioned increase that could bring frontline pay to roughly 2,000 yuan a month — combined, more than double the pre-crisis base wage. The company also brought in psychiatrists (reports put the number at around 70) and opened a counseling hotline that, according to later reporting, many workers did not trust enough to use.

In June 2010, Foxconn also announced it would stop making condolence payments beyond its legal obligations to the families of workers who died by suicide. The company said it had evidence that in at least one case, a worker had told relatives they would receive a large payout if he killed himself; families of earlier victims had reportedly received sums exceeding $14,000, roughly ten years' base wages at the time.

The Pledge

In spring 2011, the Hong Kong-based labor group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) and researchers including sociologist Jenny Chan reported that Foxconn was requiring new hires — first documented at its Chengdu facility — to sign a document promising not to attempt suicide or self-harm, and to accept counseling if it was offered. Southern Metropolis Daily published a photograph of the memo on Foxconn letterhead.

The clause that drew the most attention was not the pledge not to self-harm but the one addressing what would happen if a worker did: the company would not pay more than the legally required minimum, and the family would "actively cooperate" rather than pursue further compensation. After the document was reported internationally by outlets including the Associated Press and covered by CBS, HuffPost, and NBC, Foxconn said it would withdraw it.

The Audits

In January 2012, Apple became the first technology company to join the Fair Labor Association, and in February it asked the FLA to conduct special voluntary audits of its final-assembly suppliers, starting with Foxconn's Shenzhen and Chengdu plants — inspections that covered three factories and roughly 35,000 workers via surveys and interviews.

The FLA's report, published in March 2012, found "serious and pressing noncompliances," with excessive working hours at the top of the list. All three audited factories exceeded both the FLA's own 60-hour weekly cap and China's legal limits of 40 regular hours plus 36 hours of overtime per month; average weekly hours ran past 60 during peak production, and the audit documented stretches where employees worked more than seven consecutive days without the legally required rest day. The report also found that Foxconn paid unscheduled overtime only in 30-minute increments — so a worker who stayed 29 minutes past shift received nothing for it. Foxconn and Apple agreed to reduce hours to legal limits by July 2013 and to retroactively audit and pay any wages owed.

After the Audit

Labor researchers who continued monitoring conditions after the 2012 FLA report, including SACOM, described improvements as partial. A subsequent SACOM investigation characterized the post-crisis period as largely "back to business as usual," reporting that quota increases at some lines outpaced the wage gains — one CBS News account cited a 9 percent wage increase against a 25 percent rise in production quotas at a monitored line. Foxconn has continued to face labor-rights scrutiny at its China facilities in the years since, including a 2022 worker unrest incident at its Zhengzhou "iPhone City" plant over pay and COVID-19 lockdown conditions.

The nets are still there. Foxconn's own 2010 statements described them as a permanent fixture across its dormitory buildings, a physical answer to a problem that outside investigators, in the FLA's own words, kept tracing back to the number of hours a legally capped workweek was not supposed to allow.

Filed from public reporting:

• The Guardian — Foxconn Offers Pay Rises and Suicide Nets as Fears Grow Over Wave of Deaths
• BBC News — Foxconn Gives Workers Second Pay Rise
• BBC News — Foxconn Factory Ends Condolence Payments Over Suicides
• NBC News — Foxconn to End Suicide Payments to Families
• HuffPost — Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Makes Employees Sign 'No Suicide' Pact
• CBS News — What Happened After the Foxconn Suicides
• ProPublica — By the Numbers: Life and Death at Foxconn
• Apple Newsroom — Fair Labor Association Begins Inspections of Foxconn
• CNN — Apple Supplier Audit Finds Wage and Overtime Violations
• NBC News — Overtime at Apple Supplier's China Factories Still Too High, Labor Group Says
• The Asia-Pacific Journal — A Suicide Survivor: The Life of a Chinese Migrant Worker at Foxconn (Jenny Chan)
• SOMO — Foxconn Suicides Forgotten, Back to Business as Usual? New SACOM Report Released