Casting a pall of gloom on the workers, Dunlop India (DIL) management on Saturday slapped a work suspension notice on its mother unit at Sahaganj in Hooghly district. Wages are also in the arrears.
The work suspension takes effect from Saturday morning and during the period of operation there would be no pay for the over 700 workers at this unit which has been in doldrums for over a decade now. The Pawan Ruia group bought DIL in 2005 from the Manu Chhabria group.
West Bengal Labour Minister Purnendu Bose regretted the decision saying this would send a ‘bad message'. He said that it was the intransigent attitude of the management which brought matters to this stage although the State government had tried its utmost.
“This Government believes in following the path of negotiation to resolve matters — we have asked workers to talk to us in case of any problem and same holds for the industry… but in this case the company took a unilateral decision”, he said adding that the Government would still try to resolve issues through talks.
He said that a meeting would be held with the company where he, along with Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee, would jointly try to resolve issues.
“I have already held a discussion with the Industry Minister,” Mr. Bose said. The company served a four-page notice on the workers saying that since the resumption of operations after the year-long work suspension ending in November 2009, the company had hoped workers' cooperation but on and off agitations continued to disrupt the functioning of the factory. The management also alleged that there was large scale theft of factory goods and materials with the support of some of the workmen.
The notice said that the management had approached the State Labour Minister in August seeking the government's support to improve the factory's law and order position, but the situation worsened with the disconnection of the factory's power supply which had serious repercussion on the security of the plant and its employees.
Even as the factory ground to a halt, efforts by the management to shift raw materials to other units, was blocked by the workers.
As such, the management said that it was not finding it possible to continue paying idle wages while risking the safety of the plant and its employees.
