Bengaluru: Karnataka has blamed the Wistron Corporation for the violence that took place in its plant that manufactures Apple phones on contract.
Labour Minister Shivaram Hebbar on Monday said that vandalism at the company’s plant last year was due to its own fault as it failed to address the issues of the aggrieved employees on time.
He added that Wistron has rectified its mistake and resumed its operations in Kolar after cutting down its contract employee strength from 8,490 to 2,657 from this month.
Hebbar washed his hands off the incident stating that Wistron had failed to intimate its expansion plans to departments concerned. This sparked off the violence.
"Neither the Labour department nor the government is at fault in this case at all," he said in a reply to a written question in the Legislative Council.
In his reply to the unstarred questions, he said the plant had grossly violated government's stipulated norms, such as going overboard in hiring employees under contract system besides changing its eight-hour shift to 12-hour shift without 'properly intimating' employees and failing to convey them about their change in salary component.
"Their new attendance system failed to function due to some technical snags. This company had failed to address it on time, hence, a section of the employees went on a rampage in the plant premises on December 12, 2020. Apart from this, the company had credited their salaries late on December 11, 2020. Therefore, the employees went berserk," he explained.
"The company which started its operations from September 1, 2020, with 3,000 employees, soon its employee strength reached 9,833 by end of October. The company neither informed nor took prior permission from departments concerned," he claimed.
It may be recalled that in December last year, a section of the employees of Wistron resorted to violence and damaged the company's property alleging salary disparity, cut in wages and overwork.
Wistron Infocomm Manufacturing (India) Private Limited, Taiwanese contract manufacturer, is one of the third-party makers of iPhone for Apple and assembles select models in India.
