The global chairman of the Bosch board, Dr Volkmar Denner, has said he is extremely concerned about the ongoing strike at the Bangalore plant of the world’s leading auto part maker. He has sought labour reforms of the kind that will help the Indian manufacturing sector remain competitive.

“Labour reforms are necessary provided they help us to remain competitive,” Denner told newspersons during his maiden visit to the country.

The chairman of the Bosch board was peppered with questions on the labour strike, which has been going on for the last 45 days. Nearly 2,300 workers at the company’s Bangalore plant are on strike, seeking better wages to match the higher productivity norms put in place by the auto-parts maker. The Karnataka Government has banned the strike while the workers have filed a writ petition in the High Court against the order.

“We are doing everything to come to an agreeable solution with the workers,” Denner said. He, however, did not describe the kind of labour reforms the Government should implement.

Loss estimate

Meanwhile, in a filing with the BSE, Bosch has said that the estimated loss on account of the labour strike was about 2 per cent of the turnover during the strike period. Mico Employees Union president Prasanna Kumar said there were mainly two issues which the employees union had put forth among their demands.

One was regarding making 369 temporary workers permanent as they have been working in the company for nearly 10 years.

The next was increasing the wages as the management has decided to implement a new wage structure based on Valid Time study which increases production targets to nearly double of the earlier ones.

As per the earlier model, the wage structure was based on negotiations between the workers’ union and the management. If higher productivity was achieved, incentives would be given to the workers. Each of the various plants of Bosch spread across the country has a different wage structure.

Bosch’s managing director, Dr Steffen Berns, said the company offers its workers one of the best wage structures in the industry and was hopeful that, very soon, the strike would be called off.

He said all the orders from various passenger car companies were being met and there has been no lag in production.

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