Shortcomings of HR, If any in violent incidents - A software bug may have set off violence at Wistron factory

https://www.deccanherald.com/city/be...ry-927472.html

The violence in this factory can have ripple effects on FDI and plans to bring in factories leaving China.

HR angles are very important in the whole issue.

1) Flaw in how Wistron logged the workers’ attendance.

2) “Initially, the company was using a biometric system to chart the attendance of contract workers who are paid on the number of days they work. But from October 2020, they introduced a new access card attendance system, which had software bugs,

3) Bugs were not ironed out of the system even though the problem continued for two months.

4) Hundreds of workers were consequently subjected to lower payments because the system showed them absent on working days.

5) Overtime violations

6)Wistron’s management had also expressed surprise about the scale of their workforce discontent.

All these are direct evidence of leadership failure.

When the new time check system is introduced, more direct monitoring by HR would be needed to sort out issues.

When suddenly wage bills reduced HR and Accounts department should have analyzed and looked for reasons. Production may have been stable,but how can wages reduce

What was the communication gap between Management and workers, who were mostly youngsters?

The case is an example of how simmering discontent, new systems left unmonitored etc can create a state where heavy loss takes place and our image as a place to shift factories from China gets hit

This reminds me of the case in Maruti where contract labor killed the AGM HR in violent incidents a few years ago.

I donot accept software bug which lead to wrong wage calculations there by workers were paid less which was not noticed by Management leads to workers ravaging of employer properties. This is a very good example how the communication gap between the Management and workers not sorted out at the appropriate time which resulted in heavy loss of money and time. The Management has to check the system of payment to workers and lend an ear to workers grievances which would have sorted this sort of grievances in time. It is a good IR situation to ponder upon by our HR community for future HR Leaders.

I hope you know, attendance manipulation is the most common tool used by contractors to pay less than minimum wages.
So are you sure there was a software bug?
Also, it is possible that the company paid full amount but contractors did not pay to the workers.
You must remember this is a chinese factory. They are far worse than our marwari owned lala company factories.
If your post is based on some information (i assume public information), then please share the source so we can understand it better.
But the underlying statement is correct. It was stupid of the HR / IR team (and specially those in Contract Cell) not to have known the problems were brewing