Industry
Apple Inc said Saturday that it had put the Wistron contract maker on a certification service and would not give Taiwanese new business until it took corrective action after lapses at their plant in southern India .
PHOTO FILE: Men with a protective face mask walk past the broken windows of a facility run by Wistron Corp., a Taiwanese contract maker for Apple, in Narsapura near the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, India, 14 December 2020. REUTERS / Stringer / Photo File
NEW DELHI / BENGALURU -Apple Inc. has put supplier Wistron Corp on a certification service, saying Saturday it would not give a Taiwanese contract maker new business until it addresses the way employees were treated at their plant in southern India.
Early findings from Apple’s post-violence investigation at the Wistron base in Karnataka state in India showed a breach of the ‘Supplier Code of Conduct’, the Cupertino, California-based tech giant said in a statement.
Workers made an angry deal over unpaid wages destroyed buildings, gear and iPhones on Dec. 12, causing millions of dollars in losses to Wistron and forcing the plant to close.
Apple said Wistron had failed to implement proper working hours management processes, which caused “pay delays for some employees in October and November”.
Wistron admitted on Saturday that some workers at the Narasapura plant in Karnataka had not been paid properly or on time, and was removing a chief officer who was monitoring her. their business in India.
Apple said it will continue to monitor Wistron’s progress on corrective action.
“Our main goal is to ensure that all employees are treated with dignity and respect, and are paid promptly,” Apple said, adding that it will continue to investigate issues at the scene. plant, located about 50 km outside the southern tech center. of Bengaluru and collects one iPhone model.
“This is a new facility and we recognize that we have made mistakes as we have expanded,” Wistron said in a statement. “Some of the processes we have put in place to manage workgroups and strengthen payments and update. “
Wistron said it is restructuring its teams and setting up 24-hour lifelines for employees to make anonymous complaints.
INCLUDING SETBACK
Apple’s test of testing will delay Wistron’s smartphone production and hurt its manufacturing campaign in India where it promised to invest around 13 billion rupees (US $ 177 million) over the next five years as part of an incentive plan linked to New Delhi’s production for smartphone manufacturing.
Wistron had plans to make another iPhone model at the Kolar plant and planned to hire up to 20,000 employees a year, a source previously told Reuters.
But he could not cope with the rapid scaling of manpower and broke several laws, Karnataka state officials found after inspecting the plant in the aftermath of the violence.
The number of workers rose to 10,500 from the 5,000 allowed in a short time, Karnataka’s factory division said in a report, which was reviewed by Reuters.
“The HR department was not properly established by staff with good knowledge of labor laws,” concluded the report of the study, which was conducted on December 13th.
Wistron responded to emails from Reuters seeking comment on the breaches listed.
Other breaches highlighted in the report included underpaid wages for contract workers and housekeepers, and forcing female employees to take on additional work without legal permission.
The findings of this study, and another preliminary study by the government, confirm the complaints about unpaid pay and poor attendance registration systems reported in interviews by Reuters with at least half a dozen Wistron employees.
The Wistron test is also likely to distort Apple’s plans to go up in India, a market they have pledged to expand its manufacturing base outside of China.
Apple started assembling its first iPhone model in India through Wistron in 2017. It has now built a collection operation, with Foxconn in southern India and another major supplier being Pegatron to initiate local activity.
(US $ 1 = 73.5700 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru and Sankalp Phartiyal in New DelhiEditing by Shri Navaratnam and Alexander Smith)