Hero's Haridwar plant to resume production from tomorrow

The country's largest two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp today said it will resume from tomorrow normal operations at its Haridwar plant, which was hit by workers' agitation last week.

The plant was scheduled to resume production from today after workers and the management reached an agreement on Saturday.

"As a routine practice, a thorough preventive check is done on all tools and machines in the plant before resuming normal operations after any sort of similar activity inside the plant," the company said in a statement.

Today has, therefore, been declared a holiday in the plant to carry out these checks. Normal plant operations will resume from Tuesday, it added.

Production at the plant was affected last week with workers going on a tool-down agitation against the suspension of two colleagues. While the workers claimed that production at the plant had came to a complete halt, the management had insisted the impact was very insignificant.

The workers had claimed that the management suspended two workers, one earlier this month and another on August 29 without proper reason. They had demanded their reinstatement.

However, according to the company spokesperson, last Friday, a worker was served a show-cause notice for "misrepresenting facts while applying for employment at the plant, in violation of the model standing orders and policies laid down by the company".

The plant is the company's biggest, with a daily capacity of about 8,500 units, and manufactures models including the popular Splendor, Passion and Glamour. It employs about 4,000 workers.

Hero MotoCorp, the country's largest two-wheeler maker, has two other plants at Gurgaon and Dharuhera in Haryana, each with a capacity to roll out around 6,500 two-wheelers a day.

In April, a three-year wage settlement agreement was reached with workers at the Gurgaon plant. The wage talks had remained inconclusive for almost seven months and the workers had even threatened to go on strike.