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The spurt in suicides by Foxconn's employees at its Shenzhen facility in southern China highlight the plight of migrant workers in Asia's second biggest economy.

On Tuesday, a 19-year old worker committed suicide at the Taiwanese contract manufacturer's plant in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen by jumping to his death, taking the total number of suicides committed by Foxconn's workers to nine. (The New Legalist Editor's Note: The total number is 13 now -- 5/27/2010)

According to industry watchers and labor groups, it is not surprising to see so many Foxconn workers take their own lives as the company does not take security and welfare of its migrant workers seriously and forces them work under stressful and hazardous conditions while doling out meager wages.

New York-based worker's rights group China Labor Watch has alleged that Foxconn, which boasts of clients like Apple Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp. and Nokia, enforces "military-style administration and harsh working conditions," making its workers, most of whom are in their early 20s with little or no social support, labor for up to 12 hours at a stretch on highly-repetitive, assembly-line tasks without any break and sometimes the workers are forced to work even on weekends. The workers, the group said, have often complained to them that they are "extremely tired, with tremendous pressure." Li Qiang, the group's executive director, said Foxconn "tramples" workers' personal values for the sake of efficiency.

According to labor group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Foxconn is notorious for enforcing harsh, military-style work culture to maximize output. "From our recent research outside a Foxconn's facility in Shenzhen, most of the workers agree that they feel stress in the production lines," the labor group said in a statement late Tuesday. "They are not allowed to talk to each other when working. Even in the same production line, workers do not have chance to get to know their colleagues."

Agrees a reporter of Southern Weekly, who spent nearly a month working undercover in the factory to find out its work conditions. Liu Zhiyi, the reporter, said Foxconn's workers rarely stop working except to eat and sleep, and that they need to put in grueling extra hours to supplement their monthly wage of $130. The workers, he said, would sometimes stand for eight hours but they have no choice. "If you don't work overtime, you don't make money," Liu wrote. "But if you take the overtime, the fatigue will make your whole body feel the pain."

According to Liu Kaiming, a workers' rights advocate with the Institute for Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen, like Foxconn, many manufacturing companies in China do not regard humane working conditions as a very important issue as they are more focused on output and will do anything to achieve the production targets set by their clients.

"In some isolated companies, you will never know what's happening there," Liu said.

Foxconn, whose parent company is Hon Hai Precision Industry, one of China's largest foreign employers and the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, has around 420,000 people working in its Shenzhen facility or almost half of its total workforce in China but has done little to treat its workers with dignity and respect or improve their work life, Liu feels.

Last year in July, a 25-year-old Foxconn employee leapt to his death after being interrogated over a missing iPhone prototype. Rights groups suspect the worker was tortured and beaten up severely by the interrogators and security officials in the Shenzhen complex, prompting him to take his own life.

Liu feels that the suicides by Foxconn's workers also underscore the growing problem Chinese migrant workers face when they come to big cities.

"Today's migrant workers have higher expectations than their parents, but reality has not changed," Liu said. "They cannot bridge the gap between their dreams and reality."

Other labor experts agree.

According to Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin's Geoffrey Crothall, the new generation of migrant workers, who come from remote parts of China to big cities, have high aspirations but find it difficult to turn them into reality as they are overworked and get poor pay. And, frustrations rise when these workers sometimes "go to glitzy shopping malls and see people their own age driving BMWs and carrying Louis Vuitton handbags," Crothall said.

"These young workers feel like there's no one caring for them," said China Labor Watch's Li.

"The migrant workers of this generation are so different from earlier generations," says Li Guorui, a psychology professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. "Modern migrant workers live in an age where it easy to get information through mobile phones, the media and the Internet. It is easy for them to know the lives of youths of the same age." Today's workers, Li said, "don't want to be a money-making machine."

According to Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who signed a letter with eight other scholars urging the government to protect migrant workers' interests, Hon Hai "is a microcosm of China's labor system." "The country's prosperity is based on migrant workers' blood and sweat, and the country certainly needs to do something for the laborers," Gou said.

Crothall has a solution: "The wages of these workers should be raised to decent levels so they won't feel they need to rely on overtime. That would give them time to socialize, relax and work through whatever issues they have."