Apple temporarily halts iPhone production at Wistron after workers riot, pending probe

Apple is investigating whether the riot was caused by its Taiwanese iPhone assembler Wistron breaking guidelines over staff pay and working conditions.

Following the riot at Wistron's plant near Narasapura, India, Apple has announced that it is probing whether the supplier broke its guidelines for the iPhone assembler. According to Reuters, Apple has said that it is cooperating with local police.

"We have teams on the ground," said Apple in an email to Reuters. "[We] have immediately launched a detailed investigation at Wistron's Narasapura facility."

Apple reportedly also said that its teams included auditors, and that it is dedicated to ensuring all workers are treated with dignity and respect.

The protest by some thousands of contract workers concerned both unpaid wages and better working conditions. The rioting caused an estimated $60 million in damages to equipment.

Wistron, has filed a police report accusing more than 5,000 workers and 2,000 further unknown people, of the damage. The company has not commented on Apple's investigation, but said in the filing that it is "deeply shocked" by the violence.

The Narasapura plant is where Wistron has reportedly been recruiting heavily for staff in recent months. The plans were to generate a total of 10,000 jobs at the facility.

18 Comments

eriamjh 1760 comments · 17 Years

About 3 years ago

If you don’t pay your workers, they might get mad. Angry, even.

Apple is probably pretty mad at Wistron.

marktime 40 comments · 10 Years

That’s a lot of damage and a lot of rioters at a pretty new plant. Would so many newly-hired workers really trash their workplace rather than just go on strike. I’m thinking that Wistron, as a recent entrant in India, forgot to pay off someone who then arranged for the traditional “nice plant you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it” demonstration.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

marktime said:

That’s a lot of damage and a lot of rioters at a pretty new plant. Would so many newly-hired workers really trash their workplace rather than just go on strike. I’m thinking that Wistron, as a recent entrant in India, forgot to pay off someone who then arranged for the traditional “nice plant you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it” demonstration.

Strike?   Here is what strikes used to look like in the U.S.
India and others have not yet had a Roosevelt stand up for workers yet.   As in other strikes of this era, this one was settled by government troops forcing workers back to work. In this case, the governor sent his state militia to occupy the entire town.   They bivouac'd on the hillside overlooking the town with Carnegie's Steel mill down at the bottom on the banks of the Monongahela River

As a side note for environmentalists:   Notice in the photo you cannot see the hillside on the other side of the river.   That's what Pittsburgh was like back then. Charles Dickens described it as "Hell with the lid off".

So the relevance of something that happened over a hundred years ago in the US to present days conditions in India is what?

You might want to read up on the nationwide strike in India on November 26, 2020 that involved over 250 million people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Indian_general_strike). Doesn't seem to me that Indians don't know how to express their unhappiness by withholding labor.

flydog 1140 comments · 14 Years

marktime said:

So the relevance of something that happened over a hundred years ago in the US to present days conditions in India is what?

You might want to read up on the nationwide strike in India on November 26, 2020 that involved over 250 million people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Indian_general_strike). Doesn't seem to me that Indians don't know how to express their unhappiness by withholding labor.

The relevance is pretty clear if you read the entire post. Whether it happened 100 or 1,000 years ago makes no difference.