Pay Us or We Kill Ourselves Say Foxconn Workers

Many of us have been the situation in the past where we cannot get unscrupulous employers to pay what we are owed. Most of us have had bad jobs in the past and worked for people who are either just plain bad or who have literally run out of cash. It sucks to have worked hard and then potentially receive nothing for it, particularly when there are bills to pay and debts waiting, fingers drumming. But how bad do things have to be before you would threaten to kill yourself over said unpaid wages? According to

, that is exactly what a full 300 people have done at the

plant in Wuhan, China. 300! That is 300 people who either believe that the only way to get a raise that they believe they deserve is to threaten to jump off of the roof of the plant. How many of those people actually mean to carry out the threat and how many are bluffing remains to be seen. Hopefully, they will get paid and we will never find out. The original suicide threat took place on January 2 after the workers were denied an increase in pay. Here's where Foxconn, which manufactures the Xbox 360, started behaving particularly badly. The company gave a straight ‘no' to the request for a raise. Rather they offered the workers the option of keeping their job with no raise, or leaving with some compensation. Many workers chose the second option. Apparently it is better to get out of Foxconn with some money in your pocket than to keep a steady job earning little. However, the workers that quit have yet to receive a dime from Foxconn. Hence the threat of suicide in lemming-like proportions. For now, the potential jumpers are down from the roof, but the threat of a return remains.