Wistron, a supplier to Apple, on Saturday acknowledged mistakes at its facility at Narasapur in Kolar where violence broke out on December 12 over labour issues.
“This is a new facility and we recognise we made mistakes as we expanded. Some of the processes we put in place to manage labour agencies and payments needs to be strengthened,” the company said in a statement released here.
“The safety and wellbeing of our team members is always our top priority and a core value for everyone at Wistron. Since the unfortunate events at our Narasapura facility we have been investigating and have found that some workers were not paid correctly, or on time. We deeply regret this and apologize to all of our workers.”
Further, it said: “We are taking immediate action to correct this, including disciplinary action. We are removing the Vice President who oversees our business in India. We are also enhancing our processes and restructuring our teams to ensure these issues cannot happen again.”
Stating that the top priority is to ensure all workers are fully compensated immediately, the Wistron statement said that they are working hard to achieve that. “We have established an employee assistance program for workers at the facility. We also set up a 24-hour grievance hotline in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and English to ensure all workers can voice any concerns they may have anonymously. We are deeply committed to our business and employees in India. We are working diligently on corrective actions to ensure this does not happen again.”
