Police have detained 104 striking workers protesting low wages at a Samsung Electronics Co plant in southern India, as they were planning a march yesterday without permission, officials said.
The detention marks an escalation of a strike by workers at a Samsung home appliance plant near Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. Workers want higher wages and have boycotted work for a week, disrupting production that contributes about one-third of Samsung’s annual India revenue of US$12 billion.
The Samsung protests have cast a shadow on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan of courting foreign investors to “Make in India” and tripling electronics production to US$500 billion in six years as foreign companies diversify their supply chain beyond China.
Photo: Reuters
The workers yesterday planned to start a protest march, but were detained as no permission was given since there are schools, colleges and hospitals in that area, Kanchipuram District senior police officer K. Shanmugam said.
“It is the main area which would become totally paralyzed and [the protest would] disturb public peace,” he said. “We have detained them in wedding halls as all of them can’t be in stations.”
Workers have since last week been protesting at a makeshift tent near the plant, demanding higher wages, recognition for a union backed by the influential labor group Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and better working hours.
Samsung is not keen to recognize any union backed by a national labor group, such as the CITU, and talks with workers and state government officials have not yielded any resolution.
The South Korean company is planning job cuts of up to 30 percent of its overseas staff in some divisions, including in India.
India’s antitrust body has found that Samsung and other smartphone companies colluded with e-commerce giants to launch devices exclusively, contravening competition laws, Reuters has reported.
The Samsung plant employs about 1,800 workers and more than 1,000 of them have been on strike.
The factory makes appliances such as refrigerators, TVs and washing machines.
Another Samsung plant that makes smartphones in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has had no unrest.
CITU leader A. Jenitan said police also detained one of their senior leaders, E. Muthukumar, who was leading the Samsung protests at the factory near Chennai.
“The workers have been asked to return to the [strike] tent,” he said.
Shanmugam said there was no timeline as to how long the workers would be detained.
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
China’s economic planning agency yesterday outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy, but refrained from major spending initiatives. The piecemeal nature of the plans announced yesterday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and the Shanghai Composite Index gave up a 10 percent initial gain as markets reopened after a weeklong holiday to end 4.59 percent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dived 9.41 percent. Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie (鄭珊潔) said the government would frontload 100 billion yuan (US$14.2 billion) in spending from the government’s budget for next year in addition
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS