One worker dead at Apple iPhone contractor in China

HONG KONG, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A worker has died at a factory belonging to Apple Inc. contractor Foxconn Technology Group, but the Taiwanese company declined to comment on the cause of the man's death.

The worker was a 28-year-old employee who had been working at the Foxconn manufacturing base in Zhengzhou, China since October 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

China Labor Watch, an independent monitoring group based in New York, said the death was a suicide, and that the man jumped from a building on Tuesday.

The group said Foxconn Zhengzhou is an important supplier of iPhone production to the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology company and that the factory was also the site of three suicides in spring 2013 that occurred within a 20-day period.

Workers at the manufacturing base are reportedly threatened with termination if they talk on the job, according to China Labor Watch.

Foxconn employs more than a million workers in China, and its Zhengzhou campus has more than 200,000 employees.

The Taiwanese firm increasingly has become the object of scrutiny for its draconian labor practices – but Apple continues to conduct business with the company to produce its iPhones and iPads.

Foxconn has tried to improve labor conditions and implement suicide prevention policies across its campuses. Since 2010, the company has raised wages annually in China and opened its sites to audits by the Fair Labor Association.