Citu Castigates Philips For Not Heeding Unions Demands

"Since settlement of the charter of demands in 1992, production value has increased 3.38 times at the company's consumer electronics (CE) unit and 1.95 times at the luminaire unit," Chittabrata Mazumdar, general secretary, Citu, said here yesterday.

"Wages at the CE unit has dropped to 1.15 per cent of the production value in 1994 and 1995 compared with 2 per cent in 1992," he pointed out.

The unions, had demanded a wage hike of 154 per cent of the 1992 wages, whereas production has gone up three times, Mazumdar said.

"The company has agreed to only a 139 per cent hike which has been turned down," a senior Peico Workers' Union member said.

 

This was later withdrawn by the Philips India management after a two-day strike last month. At the same time they announced a deduction of 8-days salary for the strike, citing provisions in Section 9(2) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936.

The unions have, however, managed to get a stay order from the Calcutta High Court on the proposed 8-day wage deduction.

What the unions have also found objectionable was that the company has, over the last few years, been shifting production activities of items like audio and lamp fittings from Calcutta to Pune and Kota.

A PWU member said that against 15.8 lakh of available man-hours, the company utilised only 7.78 lakh man-hours.

This, he claimed, was only the first step towards offering a voluntary retirement scheme to the workers.