Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) said it will meet a July deadline for giving Chinese workers greater representation in unions after Apple Inc’s membership of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) last year triggered reforms.
“Anyone can run to be a representative in the labor union,” Louis Woo (胡國輝), spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said yesterday by telephone.
The company’s expansion of worker representation started late last year and has to be in compliance with China’s labor union laws.
Foxconn, the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics, submitted to FLA audits of some campuses after Apple joined the labor-monitoring group following worker suicides and an explosion at another supplier that soiled public perceptions of the iPhone maker.
Checks by the Washington-based FLA last year found at least 50 breaches of Chinese regulations and the code of conduct Apple signed when it joined the association.
The FLA also said that worker committees “may not be truly representative” because management nominates candidates for election. Foxconn agreed to ensure that elections would take place without interference, the group said.
Foxconn more than doubled wages after protests from rights groups, including China Labor Watch and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior.
A follow-up report by the FLA in August last year said Foxconn was on track to meet its July deadline for free elections and cutting workers’ hours to 49 hours a week.
Foxconn began rolling out the new union electoral process, with more union representatives directly elected by workers, last year, Woo said. The company must wait for current terms to expire before implementing the new procedures, he said.
Any union must be a member of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which may choose to conduct collective bargaining instead of allowing Foxconn workers’ representatives to deal with management, said Geoff Crothall, spokesman for Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin.
That may mean Foxconn workers do not get to engage in real collective bargaining because the ACFTU often balances the needs of companies and the government with those of workers, he said.
To make the new process meaningful, Foxconn needs to ensure the elected union representatives are workers, not managers, and are treated as equals by the company, Crothall said.
Those representatives also need to be held accountable by their co- workers, he said.
“Foxconn deserves plaudits for this initial step, but it’s just an initial step,” Crothall said. “It’s going to be a completely new experience for them because they’ve been used to telling workers what they’ll get.”
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RESHAPING COMMERCE: Major industrialized economies accepted 15 percent duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger US President Donald Trump has unveiled a slew of new tariffs that boosted the average US rate on goods from across the world, forging ahead with his turbulent effort to reshape international commerce. The baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged at 10 percent from the duties Trump imposed in April, easing the worst fears of investors after the president had previously said they could double. Yet his move to raise tariffs on some Canadian goods to 35 percent threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship, while nations such as Switzerland and New Zealand also saw increased