US hardware firms Apple, HP and Dell have begun inquiries into conditions at the Foxconn factories in southern China which have been rocked by a spate of suicides.

 

Hours after Foxconn chairman Terry Gou made an apology at a press conference, another worker fell to his death Wednesday evening from one of the buildings at the company’s Shenzhen plant.

 

It was the 12^th death since January and the fourth since the beginning of last week,” the Chinese National Business Daily said. 

 

Pressure on Foxconn and its high-profile clients is mounting over the deaths, Bloomberg reported.

 

Apple, Dell and HP have all begun probes into conditions at the plants, where staff work 12-hour shifts, although they are paid above the minimum wage. An Apple spokesman said the firm was “saddened and upset” by the deaths.

 

Gou flew into the southern Chinese city on his private jet Wednesday morning to front the press conference, where he bowed and apologized over the suicides.

 

He said he was not personally aware of an agreement the company had asked workers to sign, asking them to promise not to “harm themselves or co-workers in an extreme way.”

 

The contract also waives the rights of their families to seek compensation if they take their own lives, and allows the company to send them to a medical institution if they appeared to be in an "abnormal mental or physical state.”

 

Gou said he was not sure if the contract had been produced by the company union or the human resources department, but admitted that “the manner in which it requires workers to sign is not something that any person could accept.”

 

He denied the factory was a sweatshop and said it would install nets around its buildings to prevent fatal falls.

 

“We will leave no stone unturned and we’ll make sure to find a way to reduce these suicide tendencies,” Mr. Gou said, the NY Times reported.

 

Labor activists in Hong Kong staged a protest at the Foxconn office in the city on Wednesday and called for a boycott of the next iPhone, Bloomberg said.