Tirupur mills grapple with bonus issue

As the festive season advances, the issue of bonus is threatening to snowball into a major crisis for the textile mills in the region.

While the negotiations between labour unions and industrialists are still going on in Coimbatore, garment manufacturing activity came to a standstill in the neighbouring hosiery town of Tirupur with over 2.5 lakh knitwear workers staying away from work in response to a one"�day strike called by labour unions.

The union joint action committee (comprising members of CITU, AITUC, MLF, CPI and others) had called for a 24 - hour strike in protest against delay in the finalisation of a wage agreement for the hosiery workers whose last wage pact expired in May this year.

Over two lakh workers in and around Tirupur had been participating in the general strike urging the implementation of demands put forward by them.

The town which exports knitwear products to the tune of Rs 8,000 crore per year, suffered huge losses amounting to Rs 30-35 crore a day due to the labour strike.