NEW DELHI: Apple Inc has placed Wistron Corp on probation, saying on Saturday it would not grant new business to the Taiwanese contract manufacturer until it fixed the way employees were handled at its plant in southern India.
The Cupertino, California-based tech giant said in a statement that early results of an Apple audit in the aftermath of violence at the Wistron plant in India’s Karnataka state revealed violations of its ‘Supplier Code of Ethics’.
On Dec 12, contract workers furious about unpaid salaries demolished land, machinery and iPhones, causing Wistron losses of millions of dollars and prompting it to shut down the factory.
Apple said Wistron had neglected to enforce appropriate procedures for monitoring working hours, which “led to payment delays in October and November for some employees.”
On Saturday, Wistron acknowledged that some employees had not been paying adequately or on time at the plant in Karnataka’s Narasapura and that it was replacing a top executive overseeing its Indian business.
Apple said it will continue to track the success of Wistron with respect to disciplinary measures.
“Our primary goal is to ensure that all employees are treated with dignity and respect and promptly fully compensated,” Apple said, adding that it continued to examine problems at the factory, which is situated some 50 km outside of Bengaluru’s southern tech hub and assembles an iPhone model.
“This is a new facility and we acknowledge that as we expanded, we made errors,” Wistron said in a statement. “It is necessary to strengthen and upgrade some of the processes we put in place to manage labour agencies and payments.”
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