Gurgaon: A labor strike in a Gurgaon-based auto component factory in Haryana turned violent on Tuesday with over one lakh workers protesting and staying away from work in 60-odd companies in the automobile hub.
The strike has been called by the All India Trade Union Congress to protest alleged police inaction in a labour unrest which left one worker dead and six people injured.
While a case of murder has been registered by the Gurgaon Police, hundreds of striking workers at RICO, the auto-parts manufacturing unit, sat outside the factory gate in protest.
The management, they claimed, was responsible for triggering the violence on Sunday evening.
Gurgaon Police Commissioner SS Deswal had earlier told a news agency that "The workers' strike is illegal and we have given them repeated warnings to leave the place. We have adequate police presence to handle the situation."
RICO has been seeing labour unrest for the past one month. While the workers want to form a union, the management is not heeding to their demand saying the workers have had pay hikes and the unit is continuously seeing low productivity.
Late on Sunday, a clash broke out in the factory between workers who were on strike and those who wanted to get back to work. The situation soon spun out of control with violence and arson that left a worker dead.
Around 3,500 workers are on strike in the RICO factory. It is one of the largest industrial strikes in recent times and has brought production at the automobile hub of Manesar to a halt.
More than 60 companies operating in the Gurgaon-Manesar area will be affected by the strike. These include scooter major Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, bike maker Hero Honda's Gurgaon plant and atleast five component makers.
However, Maruti Suzuki will be relatively insulated from the strike. The strike has also disrupted the movement of traffic in the Delhi-Jaipur National Highway-8.
The district administration had on Monday constituted a four-member committee, under the chairmanship of Additional Deputy Commissioner Pushpender Chouhan, to resolve the dispute between the factory management and labour union.
"We have not received any message from either the district authorities or the company to settle the matter," AITUC Gurgaon General Secretary Anil Kumar said.
Comments
0 comment