Workers at Tata Nano plant revive demand for wage revision, approach labour department

Earlier this week, close to 200 workers, who had finished their shift at 3 pm, decided not to take the daily company transport and walk back to their homes. They, however, were apprehended by police who were allegedly called in by the company officials.

The workers alleged that they were verbally abused by policemen before being herded into company buses and taken away before they could go through with their plans.

“We ended our strike on March 21, 2016 and resumed work, and even all the pending enquiries have ceased. Since then, we had been raising our charter of demands that we gave the firm last February at regular intervals. We had 10 meeting with the management, none yielded any results. No one from the upper management has participated in these talks. Despite having shared our demands with the company officials at the meeting today at the deputy labour commissioner’s office, they said they have to study them. Two people were given showcause notices on their performance and we are being pulled up routinely for any kind of production issues. The matter of increment and wage revision has been dragging on since 2015 and we had to finally resort to approaching the state government, considering that the Nano plant is Gujarat’s ‘dream project’,” said Hitesh Rabari, chief of Bharatiya Kamdar Ekta Sangh Sanand — labour union at the Sanand plant having 450 members.

Among their demands, Tata Motors workers have asked for a 200 per cent rise in their wages.
A worker, Harpal Sinh Jhala, said the plant recently inducted around 2,000 unskilled workers from Pune and they have been getting perks, such as accommodation and food from the company. He added that workers have also not received the mandatory new pair of uniforms in the last 6 months and they have been going to work without their uniforms since February 21, even as the company pulled them up with ‘disciplinary action’ owing to this.

Nearly 200 Tata Motors workers from the Sanand plant met Deputy Labour Commissioner M S Patel on Thursday evening. Patel told The Indian Express that the meeting was in response to a written representation made by the plant workers earlier, and said that the next meeting is scheduled between both parties on March 15.

In a statement, issued by the company, it cited, “Tata Motors works with its union as part of collective bargaining towards long term benefits of both workmen and organisation. The demand made by the Union are unreasonable. The Company remains engaged in a harmonious discussion with the union representatives. Instead of continuing discussion with the management, workmen have approached Labour authorises for conciliation. Tata Motors thanks the Labour authorities for the intervention and will work along with them to arrive at a solution.”