Dunlop to restart plant, but wage issues persist

Although tyre maker Dunlop India announced today that it would resume production at its West Bengal unit this month, the year-long impasse over wages seemingly remains unresolved.

The Pawan Ruia-owned company said today it had reached a settlement with the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (WBSEDCL) over the issue of Rs 12.50-crore arrears at the Sahagunj plant.

“The Dunlop management has provided a bank guarantee of Rs 1.61 crore to the WBSEDCL after protracted deliberation on the terms of the letter of credit amounting to Rs 53.77 lakh. Production at the plant is expected to resume in about a couple of weeks and all the 1,060 workers on the payroll would be asked to report for duty very soon. The immediate target for the Sahagunj plant is processing about 40 tonnes of rubber a day,” the company said in a statement.

However, despite announcing the restoration of operations, the company said that it was yet to work out the payment for those workers who have been laid off since the plant shut down last November.

“Apart from the 229 workers who joined the maintenance programme in March, the remaining work force has not received their wages since last year. There have been no demands from their side and the matter is yet to be settled,” a spokesperson said.

Operations at the Sahagunj plant ground to a halt in November last year after some workers refused to accept the subsistence allowance Dunlop was offering during a proposed stoppage of production due to the global slowdown.

Later, in March this year, when the company asked 229 workers to join the maintenance programme for reopening of the unit and applied to the WBSEDCL for restoration of power supply, the power utility demanded payment of the arrears accrued during the earlier closure of the plant.