10th Suicide Strikes Apple Plant

On the same day that Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard promised to look into working conditions at China's Foxconn plant, a 10th worker committed suicide, PC World reports. The death of the 19-year-old male worker also came just after the company's billionaire founder took the media on a tour of the sprawling complex in response to accusations from labor groups that workers toiled in sweatshop-like conditions.

The company has brought psychiatrists and Buddhists monks to the factory complex to support workers, and now plays soothing music along production lines, adds the Independent. It plans to install 10-foot-tall fences to stop workers jumping from buildings and may give workers a 20% pay rise, though a Foxconn rep maintains the increase would not be a response to the suicides, but is being considered because business has been good.
(More Foxconn stories.)