Only the amount of damage… Riot at the iPhone factory in India

On December 12 (local time), more than 2,000 employees came to the factory, office building, fixtures, and company vehicles with stones and iron pipes due to complaints of overdue wages at the Wistron iPhone manufacturing plant in Karnataka, India. There was a riot, including the road, and 132 people were arrested.

The riot took place around 5 am, when overtime employees and morning employees alternate. The security staff said that they couldn’t get out unless they pressed the time card when shifting about the situation and tried to talk to each other, revealing that a conflict occurred and expanded.

There are 10,000 people working in the factory, and most of them are dispatched employees. The fire of dissatisfaction is because wages were delinquent, reduced salaries, and overtime work from 4 months ago. One employee promised that the starting salary for graduates of engineering college was 21,000 rupees per month, but said it had dropped to Rs 16,000 and that the past few months for non-engineering graduates fell to Rs 8,000 per month.

Some employees said that the amount of money deposited into the account was decreasing every month, and only Rs 500 per month was deposited. Eventually, at the end of the night shift, they turned into a mob.

In response, the police and state officials announced a statement that they would do their best to strengthen factory security, detect mobs, investigate the cause, and preserve workers’ rights. They expressed their understanding and sympathy for workers working in poor environments, but if they were dissatisfied, they said why they did not consult with the Labor Administration first.

Anyway, it is said that there are thousands of iPhones that have disappeared in such a crowded situation. According to Wistron, the total damage amounted to Rs 4.37 billion. Also, since the factory made iPhone SE, which is for domestic use, there is no impact on the number of overseas production. Wistron is a company spin-off from Acer in 2000 and has large customers such as Microsoft in addition to Apple. Related information can be found here .