Bangalore: Toyota’s twin plants near Bangalore stopped production a day after the management declared a lockout over a failed wage deal with its employees’ union.
“We have stopped production in both plants as a precautionary measure to ensure safety of machinery, employees and management personnel,” said Shekar Viswanathan, Vice-Chairman Toyota Kirloskar Motor Ltd, on Monday.
The joint venture plants are located at Bidadi, about 30 km from Bangalore, and have a capacity to roll out about 700 cars a day and 310,000 units annually. The production loss during the last 25 days because of go-slow by a section of workers is put at 2,000 vehicles.
The union, however, calls the lockout illegal without the mandatory 14-day notice to employees and intimation to the state labour office.
The management offered Rs.3,050 per employee for fiscal 2013-14 against the union demand of Rs.8,000. Toyota India revises wages every fiscal year beginning April unlike other firms that undertakes wage revision once in three years.
Of the 6,400 employees, 4,400 are permanent and 2,000 are on contract. One of the reasons for the lockout could be to reduce production and lower inventory, which has been piling up due to declining sale of vehicles rolled out of the plants, say union leaders.
The 16-year-old joint venture rolls out models including Innova multi-utility vehicle, Camry sedan, Prius hybrid, Corolla Altis, Etios, Prado and Land Cruiser, with some of them imported as completely built units.
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