Even though Apple seems to be investing billions to developing its business sin India as an alternative to China due to the situation with the US government, the company has yet again hit one of its suppliers Wistron’s facility located close to Bengaluru, India with probation due to the company’s inability to pay its workers their wages.
According to Reuters which reported the story, its said that Apple revealed in an early audit that Wistron has violated the “Supplier Code of Conduct” which includes not managing the working hours of its employees properly as well as not paying their wages on time.
Winstron on the other hand admitted to this claims stating that it didn’t pay some of its workers during the October and November period on time.
Winstron has been a significant supplier to Apple as well as being the company that assembles iPhones like the iPhone 7 and even the recently released iPhone SE 2020.
The company was reported to be planning on employing some 20,000 workers in a single year but couldn’t cope up with the numbers which caused the company violating several regulations that led to the outrage. There was also an inspection which showed that Winstron had 5,500 more workers than the limited number its permitted to have.
Some of the other violations include improper HR management, underpayment of wages for contract workers, housekeeping staff. The company has also made female staff work overtime without proper authorization.
Some of the punishment the company will face is probation from its major partner, Apple which will cause a delay in its production power.
This will take dent over its earlier ₹13 billion ($177 million) commitment for the next five years to leverage the PLI scheme.
Apple is however expected to continue monitoring how Winstron operates but Apple has more suppliers including Pegatron and Foxconn even though the former had issues with the Cupertino-based tech giant.
