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.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS