Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s powerful human rights watchdog has admonished labor officials for failing to adequately investigate evidence of employment discrimination Foxconn (SS:), which makes the Apple (NASDAQ:) iPhone, and told them to reconsider, the documents show.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in June ordered federal and Tamil Nadu state officials to investigate Foxconn’s employment practices, after a Reuters investigation found the manufacturer excluded married women from iPhone assembly jobs at its factory in southern India. Foxconn eased the ban during peak production periods, Reuters found.
The iPhone factory is India’s leading foreign investment, crucial to Apple and Foxconn’s plans to grow manufacturing in the country, as well as to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aim to compete with China in electronics manufacturing.
Indian labor officials visited a Foxconn factory in July and questioned executives about employment practices, but have not made their findings public.
Reuters this month reviewed NHRC files related to the investigation after the news agency requested the information under India’s right to information laws. Details have not been previously released.
An undated NHRC case status document shows Tamil Nadu labor officials told the commission on July 5 that 6.7% of the 33,360 women working at the Foxconn plant were married, without specifying whether they were on the assembly line. They said the women employed at the factory came from six districts, “which clearly shows that the company employed a large number of female employees … without any discrimination.”
Federal investigators told the commission they interviewed 21 married women at the plant, who said they did not face discrimination in pay or promotion, according to the document.
In response, the NHRC told employment officials in November that they appeared not to have scrutinized Foxconn’s employment documents, nor to address the key issue of employment discrimination against married women. The officers relied on the testimony of current employees and “filed their reports in a routine/optional manner,” according to the case details.
“The presence (of) a certain number of female employees at this point does not answer the question (of) whether the company actually discriminated against married women at the time of employment,” the NHRC said, noting that labor officials were “apparently silent in this regard.”
“The Commission has no hesitation in stating that the authorities concerned have not identified and understood the core of the problem.”
Neither the state nor federal labor ministries responded to Reuters’ requests for comment on the NHRC assessment. Calling for investigations in June, Modi’s government said India’s Equal Pay Act stipulates that there should be no discrimination in the employment of men and women.
Apple and Foxconn also did not respond to questions about the correspondence. Both companies have previously said that Foxconn employs married women in India.
The NHRC is a statutory body with powers similar to a civil court. It can investigate human rights violations, summon officials and recommend corrective action, including compensation payments.
Last year, a watchdog asked India’s federal labor department to look into reports of harsh working conditions at an Amazon (NASDAQ: ) warehouse near New Delhi. Amazon subsequently said it had investigated and taken corrective action.
In the Foxconn case, NHRC files show that the agency conveyed its displeasure to government officials on November 19 and ordered them to review the matter by conducting a “thorough investigation” within four weeks.
The NHRC said in its January 10 response to Reuters that it could not provide further information as the case was ongoing.
Reuters’ investigation into Foxconn’s hiring practices was based on interviews with current and former executives, recruiting agents and job applicants, and a review of job postings circulated by recruiting vendors who help recruit smartphone assembly workers in India.
Many of the ads posted between January 2023 and May 2024 stated that only single women of a certain age were eligible for smartphone assembly roles, in violation of Apple and Foxconn’s anti-discrimination rules.
Reuters reported in November that Foxconn ordered recruiters to remove age, gender and marital criteria from job postings.
