After around 200 employees were sacked by Hipad Technology India, which makes Xiaomi and Oppo phones, hundreds of employees of the manufacturing facility turned violent and attacked the building with stones.

Allegedly, they also tried to barge into the facility in Sector 63, Noida. To get the situation under control, police force had to be deployed at the site. However, no formal complaint had been lodged by the company till the afternoon, even as police were probing the facts.

While the Labour Department officials who reached the unit in the afternoon identify this as a case of “miscommunication” on the company’s part, sources close to the company said that they had intimated the vendor workers’ contractor in advance about the changes. Due to the shortage of raw material, the company had asked the vendors to tell these people not to come for work from Monday. But they continued to come to office and the management then barred them from punching in (biometric entry).

“The vendor had possibly not informed the workers that is why they kept coming to work which apparently led to this misunderstanding. The office asked them to leave the premises and the workers said they were not informed about the decision and were being sacked that is why they resorted to violence,” Assistant Labour Commissioner Harish Chandra Singh told PTI. 

Incidents like this highlight the plight of factory workers, the unpredictable nature of their job and calls for more stringent laws and regulations for the employers to abide by.