Apple said on Wednesday (29) that it has put into “monitoring” a factory owned by Foxconn in India due to poor working conditions. The facility, located in the city of Sriperumbudur and where around 17,000 employees work assembling iPhones and accessories, had been temporarily closed on December 18 and was not given a deadline for its reopening.
“Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur facility has been put under surveillance and we will ensure that our strict standards are met before the facility reopens. We will continue to monitor conditions closely,” an Apple spokesman said.
Big tech did not detail what this monitoring represents. Last year, by imposing the same measure on another supplier with a factory in India, Wistron Corp, for non-payment of wages, Apple explained that it would not grant new business to the company until it changed the way its employees were treated.
Employees at the Foxconn factory in Sriperumbudur staged protests in early December after more than 250 co-workers got food poisoning – of these, 159 needed to be hospitalized.
IndustriALL Global Union, the international trade union movement, reported last week that the majority of the plant’s employees are immigrants without employment contracts, identity cards or any proof of employment with Foxconn.
“The workers receive low wages, do not have access to social protection and have difficulties to join unions or to bargain collectively”, highlighted IndustriALL, in a statement.
“They are forced to stay in hostels, which they say are full and lack even basic amenities. From 20 to 40 workers are housed in a room that can accommodate a maximum of ten people and these rooms do not have adequate ventilation. Quality and hygienic food is not provided”, pointed out the entity, which added that employees can only leave the factory in an emergency (and even so with discounts on wages), they are not allowed to use cell phones within the company and their movement is restricted, situations that local unions compare to forced labor conditions.
Apple said independent auditors carried out additional assessments at the factory and found that dormitories and cafeterias used by employees did not meet the company’s requirements. Foxconn acknowledged the problems and pointed out that it is taking steps to improve local administration, facilities and services, while all employees continue to be paid.
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