Comments
Hundreds of workers of auto majors Royal Enfield and Yamaha on strike in Oragadam may end up celebrating Diwali on the pavement. Their strike, now over 45 days, means they have not received any pay for the last one-and-half months.
The companies have lost out too. Royal Enfield, for instance, has lost production of 25,000 units in September/October.
Ironically, such losses are being borne for what would appear flippant reasons. The strike in Royal Enfield is against the company disallowing mobile phones inside the plant. In Yamaha, it is over the distribution of gas stoves as festival gift.
At Royal Enfield, the strike, started on September 24, on a serious note urging the management to fulfil a charter of demands, including wage increase. When those demands were met, workers returned to work. But, then, the management declined to allow mobile phones inside the plant. This irked the workers, who went back on the strike citing this as a violation of the Industrial Disputes Act.
‘Silly’ strike
“This is silly as workers need to communicate with their families on any emergency. We even sought a locker facility to keep the phones during work hours. They did not consider that too,” said R Sampath, Vice-President of Royal Enfield Employees Union. Conciliation meetings called by the Joint Labour Commissioner remained futile.
On November 1, B Govindarajan, Chief Operating Officer, Royal Enfield, asked the workers to return to work, in vain. “The management was responsible for the stalemate,” said R Kuchelan, President, Royal Enfield Employees Union.
At Yamaha, union sources said workers objected to the distribution of gas stoves as a festival gift as all of them already had one. They wanted gift vouchers. This was not acceptable to the management. This led to the showdown, said senior labour union leader A Soundararajan. “The issue took on a completely different proportion with the workers trying to form a union, which was not acceptable to the management,” he told BusinessLine.
On September 22 two workers were allegedly terminated for approaching the Labour Department on matters related to welfare of workers and the formation of the union. Backing the two, 800 permanent workers went on a strike. However, over 2,000 contract workers continued to work.
“I cannot provide you with any official comment, but many workers have joined back,” claimed a company spokesperson without giving any details.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.