{"id":74266,"date":"2020-12-24T19:36:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T14:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=74266"},"modified":"2021-03-04T14:48:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T09:18:32","slug":"wistron-violence-and-issue-of-contract-workers-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wistron-violence-and-issue-of-contract-workers-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Why violence happened at Wistron-Apple Facility?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Wistron Violence and issue of contract workers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Synopsis: <\/strong>The recent case of violence at Wistron\u2019s iPhone manufacturing plant also highlights the challenges faced by contract workers in India.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Why\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Wistron Violence happened<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>?<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Recently, Wistron\u2019s iPhone manufacturing plant was attacked by thousands of contract workers over alleged non-payment of wages, resulting in theft and loss of goods worth hundreds of crores.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Whereas, Wistron stated that it had deposited the money in the account of the contractor (staffing firms) and the action will be taken against that firm.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">In response, Apple has put Wistron Corp. on probation by not giving new orders after an audit of the serious lapses in labour practices.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>As per the initial findings, some serious lapses have been found out in labour practices.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Wistron became <strong>fully operational in August 2020<\/strong>, with around 5,000 employees and <strong>rapidly scaled up its contractual employee strength<\/strong> from around 3,000 to nearly 8,500, due to rising demand.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">It was followed by <strong>increase in shift timing from eight-hour to 12-hour shifts<\/strong>. On the other hand, contractors were <strong>not paying the workers their full wages<\/strong> as per their contract. Wages were being paid very late and in some cases slashed from Rs 22,000 to Rs 8,000 in some cases.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">There was <strong>no employee grievance redressal system<\/strong> in place. Final argument which triggered violence was broke out over the attendance system not capturing the exact work hours of workers. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Who are contract workers?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Contract workers <strong>are hired by the contractors&#8217;<\/strong> company and paid by them only, they <strong>are <\/strong><strong>not on the payrolls of the company <\/strong>on whose shop floors they work.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Company transfers payments to contractor companies as per the agreements and contractor companies make payment to the contract workers. Principal employers\/companies are responsible for the welfare facilities of the workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">As per the data of the Annual Survey of Industries (2017-18), 36.4 percent of total production workers in the registered factory sector, are contract workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>What are the issues faced by the contract workers?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Firstly,<\/strong> Contract workers are often tasked with the same jobs as regularly employed workers but have limited social security benefits, receive lower wages, and operate under poor working conditions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Secondly<\/strong>, Sub-contracting itself has become multi-layered. In many cases, Subcontractors themselves are Hiring labor from multiple subcontractors\/third party work supply firms. Setting accountability in this case becomes very difficult. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Third,<\/strong> Despite providing the provision of Fixed-term employees in the <strong>Code on Industrial Relations<\/strong>, firms continue to rely on contract workers, because<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">The cost of hiring contract workers continues to remain lower compared to cost of hiring fixed-term employees, who are required to be paid pro-rata wages and social security including gratuity.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">In the case of contract workers monitoring, legal compliance and litigation costs are shifted onto the contractors.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<table style=\"width: 100%; height: 233px;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr style=\"height: 233px;\">\n<td style=\"height: 233px;\" width=\"601\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Code on Industrial Relations (2020)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Under the code, government introduced the option of fixed-term employment, in a bid to discourage the use of contract workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Such employees can be employed without mediation of contractors. These employees are though assured of benefits same as permanent workers in the establishment, but are not entitled to any advance termination notice or any payment in lieu of termination.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Fourth, Code on Industrial Relations is itself vague <\/strong>regarding major aspects<strong> of contract workers<\/strong><\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">The basic issue is that the <strong>provisions of fixed-term employment in India are open-ended<\/strong>\u00a0i.e. does not specify a minimum or maximum tenure for hiring fixed-term employees or the number of times the contract can be renewed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Workers may find themselves moving from one fixed-term contract to another<strong>, without any assurance of being absorbed as permanent workers<\/strong> by their employer.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\"><strong>Fifth, Labour Code on Occupational Safety and Health<\/strong> provides exceptions by allowing the use of contract workers in core activities under certain conditions such as a sudden increase of volume of work in the core activity which needs to be accomplished in a specified time.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>What should be done?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Firstly, the <strong>use of contract labour in core activities<\/strong> excluding services such as security, catering and sanitation, should be <strong>completely prohibited<\/strong> by government.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Second, <strong>Conflict between<\/strong> the Code on Occupational Safety and Health and Code on Industrial Relations regarding contractual <strong>labours <\/strong><strong>should be resolved immediately<\/strong>. Former allows contract labor in some exceptions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Third, it is notable that Wistron increased the no. of contractual workers after the launch of <strong>Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme<\/strong>, which is limited for 5 years and on the incremental sales. Such employment generating schemes should have a provision that the <strong>jobs generated should be on the firms\u2019 payroll and not the contractors\u2019<\/strong>.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Fourth, As Atmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana, is offering provident fund subsidies to employers for hiring new formal workers. <strong>This together with PLI scheme should be leveraged to generate formal employment.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">Fifth, as an immediate step, a <strong>compulsory grievance redressal mechanism<\/strong> for contractual workers should be established.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wistron Violence and issue of contract workers Synopsis: The recent case of violence at Wistron\u2019s iPhone manufacturing plant also highlights the challenges faced by contract workers in India. Why\u00a0Wistron Violence happened? Recently, Wistron\u2019s iPhone manufacturing plant was attacked by thousands of contract workers over alleged non-payment of wages, resulting in theft and loss of goods&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wistron-violence-and-issue-of-contract-workers-in-india\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why violence happened at Wistron-Apple Facility?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":39661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,9],"tags":[1302,1303],"class_list":["post-74266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-pm","category-public","tag-eco_7","tag-eco_8","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/women-labour-protection.jpg?fit=1000%2C550&ssl=1","views":{"total":784,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}