Largan Precision Co (大立光), the world’s leading smartphone camera lens supplier, yesterday said it would increase monthly and annual bonuses for production line workers in an effort to recruit and retain workers for its new plant in Taichung.
The extra bonuses would bring workers’ average annual income at Largan to NT$669,000 (US$22,122), up more than 10 percent from the previous average income of NT$606,000 per year, Largan said in a statement.
“We hope this new policy will accelerate our recruitment process,” a Largan investor relations official, who declined to be named, said by telephone.
It was still too early to estimate the increase in operational costs from the wage hike, as it depended on how many workers Largan recruited in Taiwan, the official said, but personnel expenses accounted for 17 percent of the company’s total revenue of NT$48.35 billion last year.
It was the second time this week that Largan released a press statement to disclose its wage policy. In the past, the company has rarely disclosed information other than figures in its financial statements.
The company’s move came amid rumors that had been spreading on the Internet the past few months, which claimed that the salary and benefits package at Largan is poor and that the working hours are excessive.
A production line worker at Largan could receive an average annual income of NT$606,000 (US$20,046), including annual, quarterly and festival bonuses, which would make Largan’s salary and benefits package better than those of its peers in central Taiwan and better than the average for white-collar employees in the nation, Largan said in a statement on Monday.
Despite the wage hike, the official said it is difficult to recruit production line workers in Taiwan.
“Largan is not the only enterprise in Taiwan that faces a challenge in labor recruitment. It appears that young people are unwilling to work on production lines,” the official said.
Largan chief executive officer Adam Lin (林恩平) said earlier this year that the new plant in Taichung would need to recruit 4,500 production line workers.
The official declined to disclose how many workers the company has recruited for the Taichung plant so far.
The new plant has three times the floor area of the old plant, with the new facility providing sufficient space for possible production expansion, Capital Securities Corp Corp (群益證券) analysts said in a note on Thursday.
In addition, the new Taichung plant might further increase its market share in high-end handset lenses and lay a firm foundation for the company’s revenue to grow, Capital said.
Meanwhile, public confidence in the domestic economy grew stronger this month after the government last month said it would grant military personnel, teachers and civil servants a 3 percent pay raise next year, a Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) survey released yesterday showed.
The survey showed that 30 percent of respondents thought their company might be inspired by the government’s policy to increase their salaries, with 46.2 percent of the respondents saying that the potential pay raise might be up to 3 percent and with 8.8 percent expecting the hikes to be between 3 percent and 5 percent, resulting in an average anticipated pay raise of 1.4 percent.
The online survey was conducted between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7, with a total of 19,292 Cathay Financial clients participating.
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