Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said the company practices gender-inclusive hiring and that women make up for a substantial portion of its workforce at its Tamil Nadu facility, the largest manufacturing site for the Taiwanese giant in India.
“Foxconn hires regardless of gender. Women make up a big part of our workforce here. Our emphasis is that married women greatly contribute to the efforts of what we are doing here,” Liu said on Saturday. He was speaking after the inauguration of a ₹706.5 crore mega industrial housing project developed by the Tamil Nadu government exclusively for Foxconn’s women workers in Sriperumbudur in the outskirts of Chennai.
Liu’s comments come in the wake of a Reuters report in June that claimed that Foxconn excluded married women from assembly jobs at its iPhone plant in Tamil Nadu. While Foxconn acknowledged certain lapses in hiring practices in 2022, it stated that these issues have since been addressed and denied any allegations of employment discrimination.
After ceremonially handing over keys to a few women workers, Liu said, “Living in dormitories is not customary in many of our locations worldwide, but it is part of building a support system.”
“In many instances, we hire people who have never lived in small towns or big cities. When they come to our manufacturing campuses, they have to live with thousands of young people just like them, whom they’ve never met,” Liu added.
He noted that Foxconn operates dormitories even in Taiwan, where employees choose to stay for various reasons, such as avoiding long commutes or finding safe and affordable housing. “Perhaps living away from home represents independence and a way of exploring opportunities,” he said.
In 2020, the Tamil Nadu government announced the mega industrial housing project for Foxconn employees following a large-scale protest by workers over poor food quality. The facility, developed by the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) at its industrial park in Vallam Vadagal, Kanchipuram district, spans 20 acres and can accommodate 18,720 workers across 13 blocks, each with stilt plus 10 floors. It is a first-of-its-kind project by a state government for a private firm in India.
After inaugurating the facility, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin praised Foxconn’s efforts to promote gender diversity and empower women in the state. “The project, established at a cost of ₹2,000 crore, currently employs 41,000 workers, of which 35,000 are women,” he noted.
In recent months, several state governments have been courting Foxconn as Apple’s largest contract manufacturer continues to diversify production away from China. On Friday, Liu met Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to discuss the company’s ongoing project in the state. Foxconn is setting up an iPhone assembly plant in Karnataka’s Doddaballapura and Devanahalli taluks in Bengaluru Rural District, with an investment of ₹22,000 crore.
News agency PTI reported that Liu also met Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy in New Delhi on Friday and added that the Taiwanese electronics giant expressed interest in exploring investment opportunities in Hyderabad.
