Road ends for General Motors two-decade journey at Halol

A total of 517 agitating employees have decided to regroup before the gates of a closed plant on May 1 to press for their demands, which include a higher salary package for Pune. “Though today the company stopped production, all the 517 employees will come here on Monday and stage protest at the company gates, as the management has not addressed our demands,” said General Motors Employees Union (GMEU) general secretary Aashish Sapkal.

“We are also demanding an increase in the amount paid under the voluntary separation scheme (VSS) offered by the management. The company is offering between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 10 lakh as VSS. Most employees here have been working with the company since the beginning and they should be given Rs 30 lakh as one-time settlement amount,” he said.

Earlier this month, the GMEU submitted a memorandum to the Vadodara collector, seeking intervention. “Employees are also demanding that the new company which is taking over the Halol plant should hire the existing employees,” said Sapkal.

Meanwhile, after the operations ceased at Halol unit Friday evening, GM India said in a statement it has “offered a very generous VSS package to employees, with a formula of 100 days of salary per year of service, uncapped.” In a statement, the company spokesperson said, “GM India is consolidating manufacturing at our Talegaon facility. We are mindful of the impact on employees at Halol. Employees are either taking a generous separation payment, or transfer to Talegaon. A range of additional support measures have been put in place for employees, including tax and financial advice and pre-transfer visits to Talegaon. Since announcing our manufacturing consolidation in 2015, we have worked with our employees and suppliers to ensure a smooth transition.”

The other issue is the future of the Halol unit. The GM spokesperson said the company was working towards “the sale of the Halol manufacturing facility”. A subsidiary of China’s top carmaker SAIC Motor Corp. has been planning to acquire the Halol plant. However, the deal is yet to materialise, an official source said.

General Motors started its journey in India with this plant at Halol in 1996-97 and managed to change the industrial landscape of this tribal belt, which once was connected with a single-lane road to the nearest urban centre, Vadodara. After the automobile company started operations, the road connecting Halol to Vadodara was expanded to a four-lane state highway and became the first toll-road in Gujarat.

GM produced Opel cars at Halol (around 85,000 units annually) till 2003, when it started the production of Chevrolet brand of vehicles.

The Halol unit had four assembly lines, which included a dedicated line for Chevrolet Tavera. Later, the manufacturing capacity was increased to 1,27,000 units per annum and dedicated for production of Cruze, Enjoy, Tavera, Captiva and CBU vehicles.

The plant saw one of the biggest turmoil between 2010 and 2014 when employee protests stalled operations for several days. Employees were demanding permanent positions for 800 of their co-workers, among other issues.

However, before a formal decision to move out of Halol was made, some of automobile GM’s ancillary units located at Kalol like Caparo Engineering — promoted by London-based Lord Swaraj Paul — expanded to Sanand, near Ahmedabad, to serve as a vendor to Ford Motors. In 2015, GM India told the workers about the cessation of manufacturing activities at Halol plant by June 2016. Thereafter, the deadline was extended by almost a year.

Raman Patel, president of the Federation of Panchmahal Industries, said, “There were around 120 industrial units at Halol when GM came here. They provided employment to several youths. In the last few years more than 20 MNC’s have setup units in Panchmhal District. However, the exit of GM will leave several youths jobless.”

Inputs from Ahmedabad