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Deal
Apple Inc said on Saturday it had put contract manufacturer Wistron on probation and would not give the Taiwanese firm new business until it took corrective action following failures at its South India plant.
FILE PHOTO: Men in protective masks walk past the broken windows of a facility run by Wistron Corp, a Taiwanese Apple maker, in Narsapura, near the southern city of Bangalore, India, on December 14, 2020. REUTERS / Stringer / File Photo
NEW DELHI / BENGALURU – Apple Inc has put supplier Wistron Corp on probation, saying on Saturday that it would not award new business to the Taiwanese manufacturer by contract until it addresses how workers are treated at its South India plant.
Early findings from an Apple audit in the wake of violence at Wistron’s plant in India’s Karnataka state showed violations of its ‘Code of Conduct for Suppliers,’ the Cupertino, California-based tech giant said in a statement. .
Hired workers, angered by unpaid wages, destroyed property, equipment and iPhones on December 12, causing Wistron to lose millions of dollars and forcing it to shut down the plant.
Apple said Wistron had not put in place proper work-hour management processes, which “caused some workers’ pay delays in October and November.”
Wistron admitted on Saturday that some workers at the plant in Karnataka’s Narasapura had not received adequate or punctual pay, and that he was firing a top executive overseeing his business in India.
Apple said it will continue to monitor Wistron’s progress on corrective actions.
“Our main goal is to ensure that all workers are treated with dignity and respect, and that they are fully compensated promptly,” Apple said, adding that it continued to investigate problems at the plant, which is about 50 km away. from the technological center of the south. from Bengaluru and assemble an iPhone model.
“This is a new facility and we recognize that we made mistakes as we expanded,” Wistron said in a statement. “Some of the processes we put in place to manage labor agencies and payments need to be strengthened and updated.”
Wistron said it is restructuring its teams and establishing 24-hour hotlines for employees to file anonymous complaints.
KICKBACK IN MANUFACTURING
Apple’s probation will delay Wistron’s smartphone production and affect its manufacturing momentum in India, where it had pledged to invest about 13 billion rupees ($ 177 million) over the next five years as part of the plan to incentives linked to the production of New Delhi for the manufacture of smartphones.
Wistron had plans to make another iPhone model at the Kolar plant and planned to hire up to 20,000 workers in a year, a source told Reuters previously.
But it was unable to cope with the rapid increase in workforce and violated several laws, Karnataka state officials discovered after an inspection of the plant after the violence.
The number of workers rose to 10,500 from the 5,000 allowed in a short period of time, Karnataka’s factories department said in a report, which was reviewed by Reuters.
“The human resources department has not been properly created with staff with solid knowledge of labor law,” concluded the inspection report, which was carried out on December 13.
Wistron responded to emails from Reuters seeking comment on the listed violations.
Other violations highlighted in the report include underpayment of wages to contract workers and cleaning staff, and causing female staff to work overtime without legal authorization.
The results of this inspection, and another preliminary government audit, confirm complaints about unpaid wages and poor attendance record systems reported in interviews to Reuters by at least half a dozen Wistron workers.
Wistron’s parole will also likely affect Apple’s plans to scale in India, a market it has wagered on to expand its manufacturing base beyond China.
Apple began assembly of its first iPhone model in India through Wistron in 2017. It has now increased assembly operations, with Foxconn in South India and another major supplier, Pegatron, ready to start local operations.
(US $ 1 = 73.5700 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru and Sankalp Phartiyal in New Delhi, edited by Shri Navaratnam and Alexander Smith)
