Underage employee at iPhone sweatshop fired for 10-second pause honoring Steve Jobs
Xiang Jo, a 14-year-old laborer on an iPhone assembly line in Suzhou, China, just wanted to pay homage to someone whose vision transformed the world.
Jo had no idea the homage would cost him his job.
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
The trouble started Thursday morning, when word of Steve Jobs’ death spread through the factory where Jo and dozens of other young Chinese use the toxic chemical N-Hexane to clean iPhone touch screens.
Jo, who had read about Jobs’ achievements on a heavily censored Chinese news website, decided to pause from his work and observe a 10-second moment of silence out of respect. A supervisor saw Jo sitting motionlessly and immediately fired him.