Stalemate Continues at Foxconn Chennai Plant; Employees Plan Protest

Stalemate between representatives of Foxconn India and employee union continued on Friday at the fifth round of tripartite talks held in the presence of Labour department officials at Sriperumbudur near here.

"Since the management has been maintaining their stand even as the fifth round of tripartite talks were held today, we have also stuck to our demand. There was no significant development," said Foxconn India Employees Union President, E Muthu Kumar.

Trouble has been brewing at Foxconn manufacturing units located at Sriperumbudur as employees were up against the management's decision to suspend production at the facility.

Following the exit of telecom major Nokia producing handsets from Chennai, Foxconn has been witnessing dwindling sales due to poor volume of business. Nokia has been contributing 70 per cent of business to Foxconn.

The Employees Union, backed by the CITU, as part of seeking the state government intervention, would once again resort to make a "forced entry stir" at the entrance of Nokia Special Economic Zone where the manufacturing unit of Foxconn is located, Muthu Kumar said.

"Definitely. We will stage our protest once again. We are firm on our stand. The protest is to seek the intervention of state government...," he told PTI.

"We do not want uncertainty over the future of employees.

We will continue with our protest," CITU MLA and Foxconn India Employees Union Honorary President A Sounderrajan told reporters.

Earlier this week, around 200 employees staged a protest in front of the plant and were taken into custody. However, they were released later.

In an e-mail to PTI, Foxconn had said the employees have been placed on paid-holiday-leave status from December 22 as that facility has completed all of its production orders.

"FIH Mobile confirms that employees at our India operation, FIH India Private Limited in Chennai, have been placed on paid-holiday-leave status from December 22 as that facility has completed all of its production orders", the Taiwan based firm said in a statement.