500 Phoenix Mill workers lose jobs

April 6: Phoenix Mill employess today staged a dharna in front of the mill gate to protest the suspension of 500 workers from service. Agita...

April 6: Phoenix Mill employess today staged a dharna in front of the mill gate to protest the suspension of 500 workers from service. Agitating workers, who learned about the decision from a notice stuck on the mill gate this morning, did not permit employees of other establishments also situated within the mill compound like Ulchem, Trikaya Grey, Business India and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited to enter their offices.

The suspension notice refers to an agreement signed by the management in December, 1996, with the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh, the recognised union which can arbitrate on the workers’ behalf as per the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, which empowers it to “rationalise” departments like folding and bleaching. The notice said that now only two workers instead of three would work on one machine. This has made 500 workers, employed in these departments, excess.

However, workers said they had no knowledge of any such agreement. Narayan Korgaonkar, a worker said, they were kept in thedark about this decision. “We do not know who signed the agreement, and we were not informed,” he said.

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None from the mill management was available for comment till late in the evening.

Workers have been at loggerheads with the management in the past for its attempts to rationalise departments by shifting machinery from different parts of the mill to one site.

The workers say the machinery was too old to be shifted, and that there was no guarantee it would function when relocated in another part of the mill, thus putting jobs at risk.

Interestingly, MP Mohan Rawle, who visited the site, was peeved with the workers for not meeting him more frequently. “You have not met me even once after the elections,” he told the workers. When asked if he would take up their cause, he said, “I am a mill worker’s son, and I will not allow them to come on the streets. But they should be honest to me.”