Workers end strike at Honda

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) today said normal production at its Manesar plant, which was suspended since yesterday due to strike by casual workers, will resume tomorrow.

"There was a minor incident yesterday due to which evening shift production was affected. It has been resolved and we will be resuming production from Sunday," a senior HMSI official said.

He said the plant will remain closed today as the management decided to advance the weekly off to Saturday instead of Sunday in view of the prevailing situation.

Workers sources, however, said there was still uncertainty and the production shutdown has resulted in a loss of about 5000 units since yesterday.

The workers claimed that about 2,500 casual labourers went on a flash strike after one of them was "manhandled" by a security staff, thus affecting production.

The permanent employees also joined in to support them, a worker source said.

"Today the management has given all the permanent employees off," he said.

The HMSI official, while refusing to go into the details of the incident, said the matter has been resolved and the production loss wasn't as big as what the workers were claiming as "production started in the evening shift itself yesterday".

The company's Manesar plant has a capacity to produce around 16 lakh units of two-wheelers annually.

Last year HMSI suffered a loss of over Rs 300 crore after workers went on a go-slow strike that had resulted in production dipping by over 50 per cent for nearly three months. In 2005 also, the firm witnessed a violent strike by workers that rocked the Gurgaon-Manesar belt.