Worker protests at an iPhone factory in India have caused up to $ 7 million in damage, Reuters reports. Workers at the factory, owned by Taiwanese company Wistron, say they have not paid what they were promised and are demanding better working conditions.
The Times of India has several on-site reports and dramatic video of the protests. The news organization reports, “A majority of the nearly 2,000 employees who left the facility after completing their night shift continued to destroy the company’s furniture and assembly units on a wild day, even attempting to set vehicles on fire. stabbing.”
The Times of India also has details of the salary employees would receive, with the report citing an employee as saying, “While a graduate engineer was promised Rs 21,000 ($ 286) per month, his / her salary was reduced to Rs 16,000 ( $ 218) and then to Rs 12,000 ($ 163) in recent months. The monthly salary of non-technical graduates had fallen to Rs 8,000 ($ 109). The salary amount credited to our accounts dropped and it was frustrating to see this. ” Some employees claim to have received a monthly salary of just Rs 500 ($ 6.80).
Wistron is one of Apple’s best supplies, and Apple says it is investigating the company to see if it has violated its suppliers’ guidelines.
India is the second largest smartphone market in the world after China, but India is an extremely competitive, price-conscious market that Apple has struggled with, with only about 3 percent of the market. One way for Apple to lower prices in India is to build phones locally, which allows it to avoid Indian import costs that are particularly high for goods made in China. The Wistron factory naturally makes Apple’s cheapest phone, the iPhone SE.