Reuters couldn’t set up when the observe of not hiring married ladies for meeting line work started. Thanga Rasu, a recruiter at Go Staffing, a hiring vendor for Foxconn, mentioned in November 2023 that he had attended conferences with Foxconn officers for round a yr and the “single rule” had been in place throughout that interval.
Meeting strains solely or predominantly staffed by ladies have emerged in some industries in India. That is consistent with Modi’s efforts to spice up feminine labor-force participation – which official knowledge exhibits is round 37%, in contrast with virtually 80% for males.
Scooter maker Ola Electrical is an instance of one other firm with a deal with hiring ladies. Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder, mentioned on X in Might that Ola runs one of many largest “ladies solely automotive crops,” the place virtually 5,000 work, with a plan to “develop to tens of 1000’s within the coming years.” Ola declined to remark about its hiring practices.
‘Betterment of Society’
Regardless of the nation’s financial growth, many ladies in India stay confined to family chores and childcare. Since taking workplace in 2014, Modi has put ladies on the middle of his authorities’s plans to extend incomes.
“When ladies prosper, the world prospers,” Modi mentioned in an handle to a ministerial convention on ladies’s empowerment final August. “We should work to take away the obstacles that prohibit their entry to markets, international worth chains and inexpensive finance.”
Apple and Foxconn, also called Hon Hai Precision Trade, are central to these targets. When Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner visited India final yr, Info Know-how Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw mentioned he mentioned “job creation particularly for ladies” with the chief. Vaishnaw’s then-deputy, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has additionally lauded Apple’s ecosystem for producing greater than 150,000 jobs previously three years.
Apple, in flip, has wager on India as its subsequent progress frontier and a pillar of its efforts to shift manufacturing past China. India will account for about 9% to 14% of iPhone manufacturing globally this yr, in contrast with 86% to 91% in China, in response to Taiwan-based Isaiah Analysis. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF Worldwide Securities, has predicted India’s share may attain and even exceed 20% this yr. Apple didn’t handle a Reuters question about these estimates.
India can be essential to Foxconn, which final yr exported gadgets price $5 billion from the nation, in response to commercially out there customs knowledge. Led by chairman Younger Liu, Foxconn lately has expanded in India, the place it makes iPhones and merchandise for different smartphone manufacturers, together with China’s Xiaomi, and plans to maneuver into AirPods and chipmaking.
In January, Modi’s authorities awarded Liu India’s third-highest civilian honor. “Let’s do our half for manufacturing in India and for the betterment of society,” Liu mentioned on receiving the award.
Most iPhones made in India are produced on the Sriperumbudur plant, about 25 miles west of Chennai. The manufacturing facility started producing the Apple gadgets in 2019. It now employs 1000’s of ladies on its meeting strains.
In a discussion board hosted by the Middle for Rising Markets at Northeastern College in 2022, Josh Foulger, then a high Foxconn govt in India, mentioned the corporate was “fully aligned with” the Indian authorities’s plans to spice up manufacturing. He described how Foxconn opted to rent a workforce in India that overwhelmingly comprised ladies.
“For me it was a no brainer,” Foulger mentioned, crediting his mom, a former college instructor, with giving him the thought. “We tried it and it was a unbelievable success.”
Foulger mentioned ladies migrated from round India to work for Foxconn, attracted by its provision of protected lodging. He added that Foxconn additionally hires males – “superb guys who program all of the robots” – as technicians and engineers.
Foulger, who left Foxconn earlier this yr, declined to remark in regards to the producer’s hiring strategies.
Lots of the individuals who spoke to Reuters additionally attributed Foxconn’s hiring practices to what they mentioned had been the corporate’s issues that married Hindu ladies put on steel toe rings identified in southern India as metti and necklaces known as thaali to indicate the bond of marriage.
These customary ornaments may intrude with the manufacturing course of, and married ladies will not usually take away them, in response to 5 of the hiring distributors and three present and former HR executives. Electrostatic discharge may happen when metals come into contact with cellphone parts, doubtlessly damaging them, one present and one former Foxconn HR govt mentioned.
Moreover, three present and former engineers for Foxconn and an affiliate firm, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to remark publicly, mentioned ladies had been screened for metals on getting into and leaving the meeting strains, and that the prohibition on ornaments helped safety officers forestall any theft of parts.
Reuters couldn’t independently verify whether or not ornaments affected the manufacturing course of.
In its assertion, Foxconn mentioned “married ladies are welcome to put on conventional steel ornaments whereas working in our services,” with out elaborating.
Suhasini Rao, a Bengaluru-based lawyer specializing in Indian labor rules, mentioned it will be affordable for a enterprise to require an individual to take away ornaments for security or quality-control causes as a situation of employment, supplied that was conveyed clearly.
Discrimination solely on the idea of marital standing, whereas not prohibited within the personal sector beneath Indian regulation, “might intrude with a person’s basic proper to freedom of commerce and occupation and is perhaps struck down by the courts, if challenged,” Rao mentioned.
There’s authorized precedent with reference to firing married ladies on the grounds of absenteeism.
In 1965, India’s Supreme Courtroom struck down a pharmaceutical firm’s observe of terminating the employment of ladies in its packing and labeling division after they acquired married.
The corporate, Messrs Worldwide Franchises, had argued that it required constant attendance that “can’t be anticipated from married ladies,” and that there was “larger absenteeism amongst married ladies.”
The 4 judges decided there was “nothing to indicate that married ladies would essentially be extra more likely to be absent than single ladies,” and “there isn’t a good and convincing purpose why such a rule ought to proceed.” Reuters was unable to find out if the corporate remains to be working.
Foxconn has confronted scrutiny through the years for its tradition and work surroundings, most notably in China, the place it runs the world’s largest iPhone manufacturing facility in Zhengzhou with 200,000 employees.
A spate of suicides by Foxconn workers in China greater than a decade in the past prompted questions from their households and labor rights teams about work circumstances. Foxconn largely attributed the deaths to employees’ private issues, and arrange counseling hotlines.
In India, protests broke out on the Sriperumbudur plant in December 2021, resulting in a quick manufacturing halt, after greater than 250 employees suffered meals poisoning.
That episode led Apple to dispatch unbiased auditors to evaluate circumstances in employees’ services. Each Apple and Foxconn mentioned they discovered some dormitories and eating rooms didn’t meet required requirements, and Apple briefly put the plant on probation. Two days earlier than the plant partially resumed operations in January 2022, Apple mentioned that it will proceed to observe circumstances at employees’ dorms and eating services.
