Bengaluru Toyota Kirloskar Motor on Tuesday said it was forced to declare a lock-out until further notice to ensure safety of its personnel after its Employees' Union resorted to an illegal sit-in strike and started unlawfully camping in the company premises, compromising the Covid-19 guidelines.
“Due to the current volatile atmosphere and to protect the safety of employees, Toyota Kirloskar Motor is forced to declare a ‘lock-out’ until further notice. Communication and dialogue with relevant stakeholders is ongoing to try and resolve the issue,” said the company responding to a query.
A TKM spokesperson said, “Despite our efforts to maintain a cordial and healthy working environment based on active employee participation and maintaining desired level of discipline in the plant, one of the employees who has systematic record of misconducts was again involved in breach of discipline and unacceptable behaviour which is in violation of law and service policy of the company.''
Consequently, this employee has been placed under suspension pending enquiry in line with the company rules and applicable laws. As per extant service rules and keeping in mind the principles of natural justice, all possible opportunities will be provided to the employee during the enquiry process, as per the company.
Protesting the suspension, on November 9, during the working hours, the Union President along with other office bearers unauthorisedly entered the shop floor, forcefully pulled out team members who were on their jobs and stopped production operations, as per a notice put out at the factory premises of the company.
TKM has also obtained an injunction order from the court restraining the Union office bearers and the Unionized members from disturbing the normal operations of the company, said the notice.
Prasanna Kumar Chakkere, president of TKM Employees' Union, told The Hindu , "We are facing a lot of harassment at work. At the production unit, employees are made to work very rapidly, a pace they are unable to catch up.
"Every three minutes we produce an Innova car and this month we are asked to do that in 2.5 minutes, that means in seconds we have to execute several processes, without any break. Sometimes, employees are not even able to take bio (loo) breaks. The management suspended one of our colleagues to create fear psychosis among the rest of our 3,500 members.''
