1. What are important lessons from this tragic case for organizations, both MNCs and their contracted work suppliers, and for the design of healthy working conditions in developing countries? what costs will they inevitably bear if they ignore these lessons?

2. How can governments and other external forces help prevent future demoralization and tragic consequences as occurred at Foxconn.?

WORKPLACE DEMORALIZATION AND DEATH The body of nineteen-year-old Ma Xiangqian was found at 4:30 A.M. in front of his high-rise company's campus dormitory. The police concluded that he had committed suicide, leaping to his death from a high floor balcony. Ma reportedly hated his work at Foxconn, the world's biggest contract electronics supplier with over four hundred thou- sand employees in Shenzhen, China, making products for global companies like Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard. Ma's recent pay stub indicated that he worked 286 hours in the month before his death, including 112 hours of overtime, which was about three nes the legal limit. He had worked for about three months on an extended overnight shift, seven nights a week, beginning with metal and plastic parts assembly amid dust and fumes, until he was demoted to toilet-cleaning after a conflict with his supervisor. One suicide is certainly tragic, but what has really grabbed the global spotlight is the twelve additional suicides or attempted suicides over the next four months at the same company all falling from a campus dormitoryall male and female emp 18 to 24, and relatively new to the production facility. Common employee complaints have surfaced about military-style drills, verbal abuse by superiors, "self-criticisms" that employees must read aloud, and occasional pressure to work as many as thirteen consecutive days to complete a big customer order, which often required sleeping on the factory floor. Many workers are migrants from distant rural areas of China seeking an opportunity to support themselves and help family members back home. But the very low wage and dehumanizing working conditions, the lack of purpose and prospects for a better future often render them demoralized and hopeless. Rather than take their own lives, tens of thousands of other deeply dissatisfied workers at Foxconn have simply quit after only a few months, rejecting the regimented hardships that previous generations endured as the cheap labor army behind China's economic miracle, Many other manufacturers in China also struggle with extremely high turnover. Throughout southern China, the country's industrial heartland, there is an acute labor shortage as a new generation of young employees, better educated and more conscious of their rights, seek more favorable employment conditions and options, including the service sector and jobs closer to home. 361 Coorde Western corporate customers of Foxconn have reported that they are looking into the working conditions there. Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, said that he was troubled by the suicides, but that Foxconn was "not a sweatshop." Foxconn has defended its operation, saying that it treats workers with respect. Nevertheless, it is very concerned about the spate of suicides, and intends to address worker ills by improving manage- ment skills and workplace culture. It also has more than doubled employee wages, and plans to add hotlines and access to counseling, including personal and spiritual advisement by consulting monks. INTRODUCTION Employee relations, known simply as "ER" in many organizations, is the broad area of human resources dealing with the nature and quality of the relationship between organizations and their employees.' This relationship is characterized by the man- ner in which employees are treated with regard to their physical, psychological, and economic well-being. This treatment is also influenced by several external factors such as unions and governments, and especially prevailing economic conditions as we recently have felt with the global economic crisis. Thus, the primary focus of employee relations in global workforce management is on the nature in which em- ployees' personal interests and needs are protected and served by MNCs as well as influenced by other external factors. Besides the MNC, other important external parties have important roles and responsi bilities in attending to the interests and welfare of employees, and are often quite influen- tial. Several of these important external parties and influences were discussed in Chapter 1, including social preferences, employee interest organizations (such as unions and NGOs), governments (both individually and collectively through multilateral agreements), and intergovernmental organizations such as the UN, ILO, and WTO. Globally competent firms should be aware of these different external parties and influences in managing a productive employment relationship. Our ER focus in this chapter will be on the roles and influence of the two principal parties of company and employees. In addition, we will examine the influence of unions representing the legal voice of employees. Commonly-especially in the past the field encompassing human resources and ER has been referred to more narrowly as industrial relations, labor relations (emphasizing labor unions), or even the combined industrial and labor relations" (ILR). In this chapter our broad use of ER is inclusive of both union and nonunion workplace arrangements and influences. In addition, our intended scope for global ER reflects the much broader and expanding array of employee work environments beyond industrial and heavy manufactur- ing. This chapter first examines several current and pressing ER issues in global workforce management. With these major current issues in mind, we consider important practices of MNCs for optimizing their success in globally managing the employment relationship, followed by forms of influence and current issues related to labor unions