The strike at Maruti’s Manesar plant reached its fifth day, as the company announced that they would not be accepting their striking workers demands.
The chairman of the company, R.C. Bhargava, said that in today’s time, when their union hasn’t even been registered, how can you take their demands into consideration. He added that the workers did not have any demand which they could accept.
Meanwhile, the strike has now reached its fifth day, without any production taking place at the plant. A spokesperson for the company said that the strike is still taking place, and the production has been fully halted. About 2,000 employees at the plant have undertaken this strike from Saturday, which has resulted in a production loss of around 3,000 models as of Wednesday.
The value of the production loss is estimated at Rs.150 crore. The workers on strike are demanding that their new union, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, be recognized. The new union was formed by those who work at Maruti’s Manesar plant itself. Other demands include keeping the contract labourers for Maruti’s upcoming two units to be located in the complex as well as refraining from taking any disciplinary act against their union’s eleven office bearers, who were fired following the strikes.
The industries minister of Haryana, Randeep Singh Surjewala, meanwhile said that their government is monitoring the circumstances closely, and they will not let it turn into an industrial dispute. He also said that the worker’s strike was unnecessary, even though according to the law, they have a right to form a second union.
The shares of Maruti Suzuki closed on Wednesday at INR 1,226.05 per share, a drop of 0.61% in comparison to the last week on the BSE. The Sensex in the corresponding period increased by 0.01%.
A PWC auto-practise leader, Abdul Majeed, said that these routine activities in the industry do not affect stock prices much; as such incidents take place globally as well. This should not be a concern for the company, provided that they resolve the issue quickly.
As per article published in Economic times today actually workers are being paid only 60 % of the wages paid by company and rest go somewhere else. In this kind of situation when certain vested interest(s ) pocket around 40 % of the wages bill, the question of acceptance of demand is very remote.