‘Don’t mention unmarried requirement…’: Apple iPhone maker Foxconn asks Indian headhunters to tweak job criteria on ads

Apple manufacturer Foxconn has instructed the hiring agents who help recruit iPhone assembly workers in India to remove age, gender, and marital status criteria along with the company's name from job “The instructions for ads were: Don't mention the unmarried requirement, don't mention age, nor male or female either,” said one person cited in the report. Foxconn Investigation Foxconn's move comes after an investigation by the news agency on June 25 revealed that the iPhone maker excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant even though it relaxed the practice during high-production periods. According to the agency's June review, Foxconn's ads through the Indian hiring vendors between January 2023 and May 2024 said only unmarried women of specified ages were eligible for smartphone assembly roles, breaching Apple and Foxconn's anti-discrimination policies. The HR executives cited media reports of the company's hiring practices and “warned us not to use Foxconn's name in any ads going forward, and told us our contracts would be terminated if we did,” one of the agents told the news agency.