Foxconn in China offers pay rises and nets as fears grow over wave of suicides...

Construction workers began erecting anti-suicide nets today at an industrial plant in southern China that makes millions of the world's mobile phones and computers. Five-metre long steel poles were bolted into the walls below the roofs to support webbing that will eventually cover 1.5m square metres.

To stem an epidemic of workers leaping to their deaths, the Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn – which works with Apple, Dell and Sony – has also pledged to raise salaries by 20% and offered counselling to its 420,000 employees here.

Though far less well known than the brands it assembles, Foxconn is the world's biggest contract maker of IT goods, including iPhones and Motorola displays. Its mega-facility at Longhua, Guangdong province, so dominates the local economy that officials pay little heed to complaints by labour groups of secrecy, military discipline and low wages.

But a harsh new light has been cast on these problems in recent months by a spate of suicides and allegations of murder. More...

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