The Hindu Business Line : Unions resent NTC's mill revival plan

Coimbatore April 16 The National Textile Corporation's (NTC) move to bring one of its largest textile plants in Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore Spinning and Weaving Mills Ltd (CS&W) located in the heart of the city here, under its proposed joint venture scheme of revival has drawn flak from the textile mill workers' unions.

The leaders of the joint action committee (JAC) of textile mill workers' unions who recently met the Union Textile Minister of State, Mr E.V.K.S. Elangovan, to oppose the NTC's plan to hand over CS&W for the joint venture scheme demanded that the mill be revived by NTC on its own.

The JAC, to show solidarity of the workers against what it called privatisation of CS&W in the `garb' of joint venture scheme, staged a demonstration in front of the NTC's Tamil Nadu headquarters here.

The unions are asking the Centre to release funds to meet the total modernisation of CS&W, according to Mr Jagannathan, Secretary of the JAC and AITUC leader.

NTC proposals

The NTC administration, as part of its reorganisation plan for the 40 viable textile units, has proposed revival of 22 units on its own and a joint venture proposal for the rest. In Tamil Nadu, it has proposed to leave the revival of CS&W and the Sharada mills, both in Coimbatore, under the joint venture scheme.

Coimbatore Spinning and Weaving Mills has been one of the earliest textile units to be started in Coimbatore during the colonial days. It was promoted by Sir Robert Stanes in late 1800s.

Situated in Coimbatore, the sprawling 27-acre expanse land owned by the sick textile unit assumes greater significance in terms of real estate value than its revival/modernisation plan per se.

According to Mr K. Ramachandran Pillai, Chairman and Managing Director of NTC, the corporation in its bid to bring round the health of CS&W in July last eased high cost labour (about 150 in number) through a VRS and later fused a settlement with the remaining workers for a higher productivity (new work-load settlement).

It also undertook partial replacement of machinery as it found the overall machinery life still remained good enough to achieve the desired productivity levels.

But in the last nine-month operation of the plant revealed, according to Mr Pillai, that its capacity utilisation between July 2006 and March 2007 fell from 91.6 per cent to 87.67 per cent, its annual production value slipped from Rs 23.20 crore to Rs 21.90 crore and its HOK (operatives engaged to produce 100 kg of yarn, a measure to assess the labour productivity) fell from 48 to 28.

But Mr Jagannathan said the VRS effected by the NTC last year had brought a clear Rs 10 lakh saving in the monthly wage bill to the mills even as the increase in the work-load too had brought further savings in manpower deployment, with less number of workers now looking after more spinning frames in the plant.

More Stories on : Sick Units | Trade & Labour Unions | Textiles | Tamil Nadu

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