TEACHING FOXCONN THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR

TAIWANESE company Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronic maker, is not new to charges of using discriminatory recruitment practices and workplace exploitation.

- GURBIR SINGH

The controversy has erupted again, this time in respect of the company's Tamil Nadu plant, after an exhaustive Reuters report showed Foxconn had been deliberately excluding married women from its workforce.

The Reuters investigation, carried out over several months, revealed Foxconn had a deliberate but unwritten code that excluded married women from jobs at the iPhone assembly plant in Sriperumbudur. The company's rationale, revealed by those interviewed, was that married women are less productive because of family responsibilities like "they have babies after marriage"! High absenteeism, pressing family duties and even jewelry worn by married Hindu women are seen as impediments to higher production.

Following the story, Foxconn in a statement, said it "vigorously refutes allegations of employment discrimination based on marital status, gender, religion or any other form," and insisted about 25 percent of its recruits in India were married women.

The controversy has now sharpened with Union government seeking a report from the Tamil Nadu government. It comes at a time when India is striving to become an alternative hub to China in the supply chain for digital products such as Apple's iPhone. As it is, Apple, through its contractor Foxconn, is producing as much as 9 to 14 percent of its iPhones out of India. But is there a human cost involved? The China trail Just a peep into the China's Foxconn trail, where the contractor still produces nearly 90 percent of iPhones, is quite shocking.