Around 400 workers at Tata Motor’s Sanand Plant where world’s cheapest Nano Cars are being manufactured went on strike on Tuesday demanding reinstatement of suspended colleagues.
Confirming the development deputy labour commissioner MS Patel said that of the 2200 employees working at the Sanand plant, 422 has gone on strike in support of their suspended colleagues. According to Patel trouble began about two months ago when two of the workers were suspended allegedly on disciplinary grounds.
He further said that one of the suspended workers alleged to have abused his supervisor and other was suspended as he alleged to have gone to some other department. The workers went on flash strike then too but we had immediately intervened and got both the workers and management to reach a compromise, he informed, adding that it was only after the management failed to keep its promise of reinstating the two suspended workers, their remaining colleagues began demanding immediate reversal of suspension order.
According to the deputy labour commissioner the management claimed that the the workers scratched and damaged over 50 vehicles in the plant and so they had to suspend 26 more people on Monday night and after that remaining workers go on a flash strike. Though all of them are salaried and permanent employees of the plant, there is no single leader as a result of it a panel of seven people have been formed with whom the officials of labour department are trying to have a dialogue, he added.
Tata Motors in its statement said that around 300 workmen at their Sanand plant had gone on an “illegal” strike on February 22, 2016 demanding re-instatement of the workmen suspended (pending enquiry) for serious misconduct. While the Management team is continuing to make efforts to talk to the workmen on strike and convince them to restore normalcy, Plant operations are simultaneously continuing, said the statement.
The arrival of Nano facility in Sanand from Singur in West Bengal in the year 2008 had become global news and at that time then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s effort was appreciated across the world.