Hyundai unions threaten to go on strike

Please read the correction at the end of the article.

After a strike each in 2008, 2009 and 2010, Hyundai Motor India Ltd’s factory at Sriperumbudur, near here, may face yet another strike.

The Hyundai Motor India Employees Union (HMIEU), backed by the pro-CPM Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu), says it will organise one if 30 workers who’d been suspended as a result of earlier agitations weren’t taken back. A Soundararajan, general secretary, Citu, said: “We have already served the strike notice. Tomorrow, we will observe a one-day fast to pressurise management. If they are not willing to (take the workers back), then we don’t have a choice but to go for a strike.”

HMIEU is not the recognised union, but claims majority support. It demands both, official recognition and the reinstatement.

The official union is a non-political one, the United Union of Hyundai Employees. It was so recognised last year; before this, there was no recognised union. The management and UUHE say it has the backing of 75 per cent of the 1,500-strong work force. “Let them have a secret ballot. We will prove our majority," replies Soundararajan.

HMIEU went on an 18-day strike in April 2009 to demand recognition as the official union. It was followed by a settlement in December 2010. Said a company spokesperson: “We had agreed to the re-employment of 14 dismissed employees in December 2010 purely because of the unanimous tripartite agreement reached between representatives of the Tamil Nadu labour department, the minority Citu-backed HMIEU and representatives of the management. This agreement was ratified by a Tamil Nadu government order.”

Adding: “Any agitation on this issue would be a violation of this tripartite agreement. As per the terms of this agreement, the matter stands closed. In the interim, HMIL has, as matter of routine, been receiving strike notices from HMIEU and the last one was received in August this year. The agreement clearly directs the dismissed employees who have been found guilty of major disruptive and violent offenses to seek legal recourse in appropriate courts.”

These 30 employees come under this category; they’d been suspended at various points of time.

CORRECTION
Hyundai Motor India has clarified that only the Hyundai Motor India Employees Union, a minority CITU-led union, has threatened to go on strike.  Also, the company had dismissed 30 workers and not suspended them as wrongly stated in this report. The other union, United Union of Hyundai Motor India, was recognised in 2011 after it demonstrated its majority and the settlement in December 2010 had nothing to do with the recognition given to this union. Also, the last strike in the company for reinstatement of dismissed employees was in June 2010 and not April 2009, when the strike was for union recognition. The errors are regretted.