Workers for Taiwan firm that supplies Apple end strike over cuts to bonus
10,000-plus employees of Taiwanese-owned Wintek angered by lower holiday cash handout
More than 10,000 employees of a Taiwanese touch screen maker returned to work in Dongguan in Guangdong yesterday after striking over holiday benefits.
They walked off the job on Tuesday after their employer, a subsidiary of Wintek Corporation, a supplier to Apple, said cash bonuses would be cut for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
They returned to work after management explained the financial difficulties the company faced, an executive said. Wintek reported a loss of more than NT$10 billion (HK$2.58 billion) last year, and NT$3 billion in the first half of this year.
Most of the 10,000 employees of Dongguan Masstop Liquid Crystal Display in Dongcheng district went on strike after the company handed out a festival bonus of 100 yuan (HK$126), a piece of chicken and bananas. In previous years, the company gave 700 yuan and distributed coupons for mooncakes, they said.
The next day thousands of workers at another unit, Wintek (China) Technology, located in the Songshan Lake High-tech Industrial Development Zone, joined the action.
"It's a covert act of cutting our pay," said Zhong Li, a 20-year-old worker at the Songshan plant. "The factories promised workers a cash bonus of about 3,000 yuan each year for the three main lunar festivals. Now they have refused to keep their promise.
