Several labor rights groups yesterday accused smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) of overworking its employees to make a profit.
A dozen protesters, mostly in their 20s, demonstrated at HTC’s flagship store in Taipei, holding placards that read “high-tech bully” and “HTC sweatshop,” while chanting slogans.
Two students lay on the ground, covering their bodies with red paint and animal organs, in a symbolic demonstration of employees dying of exhaustion.
Chiang Yi-han (江奕翰) of the High-Tech Cold-Blooded Youngs, which organized the protest, told reporters that HTC had failed to address the issue of overwork, with many of the firm’s engineers and line workers working 12 hours a day to enrich the company.
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) is Taiwan’s richest person, according to Forbes magazine’s billionaires’ list published on Wednesday.
Chiang cited the case of a 30-year-old engineer at HTC who died in his dormitory a day after working until 3am on Feb. 21.
“It is our humblest wish that when consumers hold a fancy HTC touchscreen phone, they would think more about how the phone was made and how the health, or even the life, of an HTC employee might have been sacrificed,” Chiang said.
HTC responded after the protest that it “will make sure its employees are respected and that it carries out its corporate social responsibility.”
Meanwhile, the Council of Labor of Affairs said yesterday that three special clinics had been set up to diagnose and treat cases of employees suffering from overwork, and another six would begin offering the service next week.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said its materials management head, Vanessa Lee (李文如), had tendered her resignation for personal reasons. The personnel adjustment takes effect tomorrow, TSMC said in a statement. The latest development came one month after Lee reportedly took leave from the middle of last month. Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer, is to concurrently take on the role of head of the materials management division, which has been under his supervision, TSMC said. Lee, who joined TSMC in 2022, was appointed senior director of materials management and
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Thursday met with US President Donald Trump at the White House, days before a planned trip to China by the head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, people familiar with the matter said. Details of what the two men discussed were not immediately available, and the people familiar with the meeting declined to elaborate on the agenda. Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment. Nvidia declined to comment. Nvidia’s CEO has been vocal about the need for US companies to access the world’s largest semiconductor market and is a frequent visitor to China.
RSS