Apple contractor Pegatron apologizes for treatment of new workers

Taiwan-based electronic contractor Pegatron, which assembles iPhones, apologized for a recent viral video that showed company recruiters throwing work passes onto the ground when issuing them to new hires in Chinese mainland, forcing workers to bend down to pick them up.

In a statement issued by the Pegantron plant in Kunshan in East China's Jiangsu Province where the incident took place, the company apologized for “not respecting new hires”, and said it was due to “limited space and inadequate management in the recruitment location.”

The video sparked outrage online. On Sino Weibo, commenters called the disdainful attitudes of the recruiters “unbearable,” and called for workers to resign in protest. On Kuaishou, a popular Chinese video-sharing platform, the video had at least 310,000 likes and 75,000 comments.

The incident has caused a wave of resignations at the plants, according to media reports and online videos showing staff walking out en masse. However, when reached by the Global Times on Monday, a recruitment officer at the Kunshan plant said she was “not aware of anyone resigning.”

The Kunshan plant has been repeatedly involved in labor disputes, according to public records. Tianyancha.com, a corporate information platform, showed the Pegatron Kunshan plant had eight different labor disputes since April this year.

Pegatron is Apple's secondbiggest contract manufacturer after Foxconn. The Kunshan plant was founded in 2014, and it is one of Pegatron's seven manufacturing plants in the world. It is a major manufacturer of Apple iPhones.

The plant was expanded at the end of the 2015, with new production lines shifted from Shanghai, and it received further investment from Pegatron in January. The total output of the plant is some 100 billion yuan ($14.64 billion) annually.