As always, it is necessary to point out that Foxconn has 1.2 million employees, most of whom live in company-owned accommodation. Foxconn's HR issues are in many ways better understood by regarding them as a small country rather than a company. With a population of 1.2 million, all sorts of very unusual things become statistical inevitabilities. By any reasonable measure, Foxconn is in fact exceptionally safe and peaceful.
On the topic of whether Foxconn workers are underpaid, they are clearly not - they perform work of exceptionally low value, most of which is performed by hand for no reason other than that Chinese peasants are cheaper than machines. Foxconn operates on very low margins and earns only a tiny fraction of the retail price of the devices they manufacture. The value in consumer electronics is primarily R&D; Without the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in microelectronics research, these workers would still be peasants and their American and European counterparts would be working 10-hour shifts manufacturing vacuum tubes and phonograph needles.
On the topic of whether Foxconn workers are underpaid, they are clearly not - they perform work of exceptionally low value, most of which is performed by hand for no reason other than that Chinese peasants are cheaper than machines. Foxconn operates on very low margins and earns only a tiny fraction of the retail price of the devices they manufacture. The value in consumer electronics is primarily R&D; Without the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in microelectronics research, these workers would still be peasants and their American and European counterparts would be working 10-hour shifts manufacturing vacuum tubes and phonograph needles.