Links of interest: Suicide | The Health Culture

Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 16 States, 2007 (CDC)

The latest official statistics on US violent deaths, including suicides, from the CDC. The report covers the year 2007, with information from 16 states. You might think the latest statistics would be more recent, but the CDC does an extensive amount of analysis. The report contains 39 tables that compare such things as the manner of death, the mechanism of injury, precipitating events, and whether more than one person was involved. Here’s a summary of the suicide analysis by age group and ethnicity (emphasis added):

Overall, the crude suicide rate was 11.6 per 100,000 population. The rate for males was more than three times that for females (18.4 and 5.0 per 100,000 population, respectively). Non-Hispanic whites accounted for the largest number of suicide deaths, and AI/ANs [American Indian/Alaskan Native] and non-Hispanic whites had the highest rates of suicide (18.2 and 14.0 per 100,000 population, respectively). The highest rates of suicide by age group occurred among persons aged 45–54 years, 75–84 years, and 35–44 years (17.6, 16.4, and 16.3 per 100,000 population, respectively). Children aged 10–14 years had the lowest rates of suicide among all age groups (0.8 per 100,000 population). Rates of suicide among adolescents aged 15–19 years (6.9 per 100,000 population) were approximately half of those for persons aged ≥30 years.

Suicide Rate Highest in Middle Age (MedPage Today)

A summary of highlights from the CDC report, including this observation:

Alcohol was a factor in about one-third of all suicides, and alcohol and drug abuse ranked second behind depression and other mood disorders as the most frequent risk factors for suicidal behaviors, the report authors wrote.

As Thomas Joiner writes in Myths about Suicide, the role of alcohol in suicidal behavior is complex. He cites an interesting study in which there was a high correlation between a mother’s consumption of alcohol and the suicide of an adolescent child. “[A]lcohol use is a signal of a deeper substrate of chronic risk – a risk that is passed on from parents to children. … [N]ot a lot of women [drink excessively]; for her to do so means that she has a severe underlying condition, and that severity is getting signaled to you [the child] either genetically or through family environment.”

Electronics Maker Promises Review After Suicides (The New York Times)

A report on employee suicides at Chinese company Foxconn, a major supplier of electronics for Apple, Dell, and HP. Run with “military-style” efficiency, employees work 12-hour shifts under constant camera surveillance. They live in cramped dormitories, with as many as 10 to a room. The dormitories house 330,000 to 400,000 people. In its defense, the company boasted that it provided recreational facilities, but the employees are too exhausted to use them. As of May 28, there had been 13 suicide attempts this year, ten of them successful and three with serious injuries. Employees jump from the upper floors of their dormitories. Foxconn is erecting netting.

Can soothing music give staff will to live? (Times Online)

A business perspective on the Foxconn suicides (emphasis added):

Speculation that big brands might take their business away from Foxconn to protect their image is unrealistic, a Tokyo-based electronics analyst said. He asserted that consumers were no longer prepared to pay the sort of money that it would cost to build computers, digital cameras and iPods without the productivity of companies such as Foxconn.

I wonder about that. I think consumers would be outraged — if only they knew.

Mainland media told to tone down reports (South China Morning Post)

A Hong Kong English-language newspaper reports on attempts by the Chinese government to censure news about the Foxconn suicides (emphasis added):

Major mainland newspapers and websites said they had received orders from propaganda officials at the provincial and central government levels to play down the suicide cases in Foxconn’s Shenzhen plants. The latest ban, issued last night, required all mainland media to recall their reporters, saying that the groups waiting outside the plant and local hospitals to seek interviews were disrupting operations. Editors at a newspaper in Guangzhou yesterday said they had been told to use Xinjua’s reports [China’s official press agency], not to give the story too much coverage and not to sensationalise it. … [A reporter] was later told by editors not to describe the 13th suicide attempt as a “suicide”, although it was confirmed as such by Shenzhen police. … City government mouthpiece sznews.com, the only news website in the city [Shenzhen], deleted all reports of individual suicide cases of Foxconn workers yesterday.

As if they could successfully rewrite history. But of course if they have that much control over the media, I guess they can.

China’s suicidal workers get pay raise (Salon)

An economic and cultural analysis from Andrew Leonard at Salon. He comments on the significance of the 20% raise Foxconn employees have been offered and what this means for China’s cheap labor advantage in the global economy (emphasis added):

Let’s not beat around the bush. “Respect and dignity,” bottom line, translates into higher wages. Wages that are high enough so workers don’t feel compelled to sign up for crushing overtime hours, for example, or high enough so workers can save enough cash to provide them with future options, such as escape from the crushing drudgery of a high-tech assembly line.

You don’t have to look far to find commentators arguing that the actual suicide-per-total-workforce ratio at Foxconn compares favorably with suicide rates in at-large populations in developed countries. Putting aside the sheer heartlessness of such an argument, this analysis ignores the fact that there appears to be an accelerating problem at Foxconn, and willfully, shamefully, misses the deeper point.

There is a great injustice at the heart of the whole process of exploiting cheap labor to make the must-have googaws for the world’s affluent. Every suicide at a Chinese factory is an exclamation point at the end of that last sentence. Both the Chinese and international media know this, and so do Apple and HP and Dell and Foxconn’s top CEO, Terry Gou. It just doesn’t look good when your employees start jumping out of windows in steadily increasing numbers. It is a sign that something is very, very wrong in how humans are organizing themselves on this planet. We don’t want to think about it when we’re playing with our smart phones, or reading the new Wired app on our iPads, but it’s the truth, and it bears constant investigation.

This is what needs to be said. And heard.

UPDATE 6/3/10:
After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers’ Salaries (The New York Times)

A salary increase had previously been reported as 20%, but it appears now that it’s 33%.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said Tuesday during a technology conference in California that he was concerned about the deaths at Foxconn, but said that the factory was not a “sweatshop” and added that Apple was “over there trying to understand what is happening.”

UPDATE 6/6/10
Foxconn Increases Raise in Factories (The New York Times)

As recently as two weeks ago, the basic salary for many workers at Foxconn’s huge factories in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen was about 900 renminbi per month, or about $132 a month. Last week, Foxconn said that salary would immediately rise to $176 a month. And now, the company says that after a three-month trial period, workers will be paid $294 a month.

Foxconn to Double China Factory-Worker Salaries After Suicides (BusinessWeek)

“The company remains a typical sweatshop, as are all factories that overlook the basic needs of their workers for the sake of profit,” China Labor Watch wrote in a June 3 statement. [Chairman Terry] Gou and [Apple’s Steve] Jobs have both denied Foxconn is a sweatshop. … Foxconn hired counselors, monks and opened help lines to assist workers after the deaths.

Foxconn to up wages again at suicide-hit China plant (Reuters)

[Foxconn] added that while overtime work was always voluntary, the wage increase would make working overtime a choice rather than a necessity for some employees.

Update 6/7/10:
After Suicides, Scrutiny of China’s Grim Factories (New York Times)
A story with many interesting details from a Times reporter on the scene, including economic implications for China and a sense of the human trajedy. Ma Xiangqian was the 19-year-old employee who jumped to his death in January (see photo above).

Sociologists and other academics see the deaths as extreme signals of a more pervasive trend: a generation of workers rejecting the regimented hardships their predecessors endured as the cheap labor army behind China’s economic miracle. …

[Ma Xiangqian’s] family said the demotion to scrubbing toilets in December further demoralized him about life at the factory complex — where a shortage of warm water in the dorm often meant cold showers, and where even simple pleasures like snacks were forbidden.

Update 7/7/10:
China, the Sweatshop

China’s manufacturing sector can afford to pay higher wages. After the suicides, Foxconn suggested moving production of some Apple products to newer facilities in North and Central China where pay is cheaper than around the manufacturing hubs along the coast. But it also doubled wages at its Shenzen campus — to about $290 a month

Resources:

Photo source: Times Online

Debra L. Karch et al., Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 16 States, 2007, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), May 14, 2010

Emily P. Walker, Suicide Rate Highest in Middle Age, MedPage Today, May 14, 2010

David Barboza, Electronics Maker Promises Review after Suicides, The New York Times, May 26, 2010

Leo Lewis, Can soothing music give staff will to live?, Times Online, May 27, 2010

Fiona Tam, Mainland media told to tone down reports, South China Morning Post, May 28, 2010

Andrew Leonard, China’s suicidal workers get pay raise, Salon, May 28, 2010

Thomas Joiner, Myths about Suicide