At the end of last month, a story out of China revealed an alarming number of suicides in a factory that makes electronic goods bought by Apple in the U.S. and other companies around the world.

Competition in such factories is fierce, since the international corporations are constantly attempting to drive down prices, so that, at the retail end, they are “competitive” with other corporations on price and features.

The result is a nightmare for workers who must adjust their bodies to forced overtime, night work, and the constant badgering by supervisors to produce, produce, produce.

Everything else is secondary to the production quotas. Also, there’s quality control. While enduring all of the oppressive conditions of an electronic sweatshop, the workers must produce a high quality gadget. The pressure is immense.

A Taiwan-owned business, Foxconn Technology Group, located in Shenzhen in southern China, has been dubbed the “suicide express” by Chinese media. Generally, news reporters are a somewhat cynical lot, but for even Chinese editors and reporters to give Foxconn this name is indicative of appalling conditions.

According to Web-based LabourStart, a dozen workers from 18-24 years old have committed suicide while working at Foxconn. Eric Lee, of LabourStart, pointed out that the thin profit margins of companies like this are driving workers to suicide, because in the end, the full weight of the global economy falls on their shoulders.

“Workers inevitably suffer as a result,” said Lee. “Analyzing this vicious cycle of exploitation, we must realize that, while Foxconn holds primary responsibility in exploiting the workers, global brands like Apple are just as much to blame for this race to the bottom game.”

The owner of the factory, a Taiwanese billionaire, doesn’t take any of the blame for conditions in the factory or for the suicides. He blames China’s social problems, although Lee reports that the company has brought in psychiatrists and Buddhist monks to try to mitigate the problems, but the owner has refused to change any of the working conditions.

China has not escaped the economic problems of the U.S., Europe, and Japan. As those three economies have faltered and find themselves in near collapse, China, which has provided much of the consumer-goods production for those nations, has closed a multitude of factories and sent workers packing, back to their villages which they left because there was no way to make a living.

If they have not returned to the villages, they have become wanderers in the streets of the big cities, without jobs and often without any place to live. It’s a story that is found around the world in the developing countries and no one seems to have an answer to the grave economic problems.

For example, here in the U.S., there is “economic recovery,” but without the creation of the millions of jobs that are needed. A jobless recovery is an oxymoron that doesn’t seem to attract the attention of very much of the American press (print and broadcast). What passes for analysis of the problem is not much more than an apology for what Corporate America sees fit to provide for the working class - and that’s not much.

While it’s true that there doesn’t seem to be the same problem of suicides of workers in the U.S., it’s hard to say, because there has been little analysis of such a phenomenon. And, it must be remembered, the popular electronic consumer goods that Americans buy by the billion-dollars-worth are made in other countries, much of it in China.

While unions in America have been under assault for decades and have been brought to a slow walk, if not a standstill, there is very little other than lip service that is paid to the defense of workers in places like China. Corporate America has made its peace with the devil of authoritarian governments around the world, just to ensure that they will receive a steady stream of goods that are the cheapest possible, while still having a semblance of quality.

U.S. corporations maintain that Americans demand this in their consumer goods and won’t buy their products, unless they are cheap - the cheaper, the better - and there is little thought, if any, for the conditions in which they are produced. For a time, there has been a movement to make Americans aware of those conditions and student groups have been a big part of making people aware.

The problem is so big, however, that only a small dent is made in the oppressive conditions, if any. If Americans and others in the so-called developed world are to be aware of working conditions in other countries - conditions from which they benefit - they need to self-educate and need to constantly check where and how their goods are made.

Foxconn may be just one factory in China, but there are tens of thousands just like it in the countries where American consumer goods are produced. The toll on the working class in those countries is unknown. Whatever the suicide rate, the conditions within which those suicides are committed are causing untold suffering for both the workers and their families.

It has been reported over the past few years that some 200,000 farmers in India have committed suicide, because they never can pay off what they owe to the people who sell them the seeds, the fertilizers, and the chemicals needed to grow their produce from those seeds.

Over a number of years, the farmers there have been told by advertising and by their own agricultural consultants and the government that the “new” seeds are the answer to their prayers. The “new” seeds are genetically modified (GM) and they require fertilizers and chemicals that are purchased each year and, each year, the farmers go deeper into debt to try to grow a crop.

Monsanto is one of those corporations and it has been working in developing countries like India for years to convince farmers to depart from their traditional ways and their traditional farming culture, because the company’s “new way” will provide bigger crops and a better living. That has not come to pass for most farmers and, when they look to the future, they see nothing but debt piled on debt for themselves, their families, and their villages.

The result has been massive numbers of farmer suicides, even in a country with a population that rivals China’s. The farmers who kill themselves - one of them reportedly drank one of the chemicals that was intended for his GM crop - leave behind wives and families with no place to go, no one to assist them. Their powerlessness just overwhelmed them.

So it is with the workers in Foxconn in China, debt-ridden farmers in India, and workers elsewhere. In both these countries, groups have formed to protest the conditions, but they need the support of workers around the world, to demand humane treatment of the people to whom they are so directly connected.

Workers are able to withstand incredible hardship and suffering, if they can see a benefit to their families and their communities in the long run. But, when they look realistically at their condition and that of their community and nation and can see no hope, that’s when they take the route to the ultimate escape.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

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