Jobs cut, monthly pay intact
Backed By Unions, 1,000 Casual Workers Refuse To Quit
Udit Prasanna Mukherji & Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay | TNN 17.11.11
Haldia: Faced with losses of Rs 600 crore this fiscal, the management of Haldia Petrochemical Limited (HPL) reduced its hired car fleet by 25% last month to trim expenses. The move was part of a larger cost-cutting exercise across various departments that made around 1,000 of the 1,800 casual workers engaged in HPL redundant. But all of them, blessed by their powerful unions, have refused to quit and continue to draw their regular wages, rendering the whole cost-cutting operation ineffective.
Now, as the petrochem giant fends for survival strategies, it continues to issue paycheques worth around Rs 1.5 crore every month to workers not even on the payrolls. Partha S Bhattacharyya, managing director of HPL, said, “The decision was taken as part of the overall cost-cutting exercise. One needs to understand that.” The average monthly pay of an HPL casual worker is Rs 10,000-12,000. “This (paycheques to redundant workers) will affect the margin by Rs 15-18 crore this year,” an HPL official said. Such workers are not HPL recruits but are hired by private contract agencies that are close to the trade unions.
The much celebrated political change appears to have done little for Bengal’s largest industrial town, where Trinamool Congress-backed labour unions continue to hold sway and issue diktats in the same fashion that Citu did during Left rule. “When Citu controlled the unions, it forced HPL
to employ these casual workers. Now, only the signboard has changed and Trinamool-backed labour wing INTTUC has taken over. Nothing else has. We have told union leaders to redeploy the excess labour in other companies. But they are not listening. The company will not survive if they continue to step up pressure,” the official said.
HPL officials also alleged the productivity of most of these casual workers is very low. “They are unskilled workers. In Gujarat, if you change contractors, the new contractor has the right to deploy a new set of workers. But here, you cannot do that. And we cannot change the contractors either because no good contractor is willing to come,” an official said.
Milan Mondal, working president of the INTTUC-affiliated HPL casual workers’ union, does not think casual labourers at HPL are in excess. “This is a ploy to get rid of workers,” he said.
Amid a fierce battle among INTTUC factions for control of unions, HPL’s highly skilled permanent employees — numbering around 400 and most of them engaged in technical jobs — are putting up a brave face. A majority of them have shunned unions affiliated to a political organization.
Narayan Chakraborty, an employee of plant materials department, said Citu had forced them to form a union a few years back but they never took active part in the union’s
activities. “Now, the Citu union exists only on paper. They do not have any influence on us. If INTTUC approaches us, we will say no,” he said. Dibakar Karmakar, an employee of the instrumentation department and Dipnarayan Sarkar, who works in logistics, share the same view. “Why should we form a union when we can approach the management on our own?” Sarkar said.
Now, as the petrochem giant fends for survival strategies, it continues to issue paycheques worth around Rs 1.5 crore every month to workers not even on the payrolls. Partha S Bhattacharyya, managing director of HPL, said, “The decision was taken as part of the overall cost-cutting exercise. One needs to understand that.” The average monthly pay of an HPL casual worker is Rs 10,000-12,000. “This (paycheques to redundant workers) will affect the margin by Rs 15-18 crore this year,” an HPL official said. Such workers are not HPL recruits but are hired by private contract agencies that are close to the trade unions.
The much celebrated political change appears to have done little for Bengal’s largest industrial town, where Trinamool Congress-backed labour unions continue to hold sway and issue diktats in the same fashion that Citu did during Left rule. “When Citu controlled the unions, it forced HPL
to employ these casual workers. Now, only the signboard has changed and Trinamool-backed labour wing INTTUC has taken over. Nothing else has. We have told union leaders to redeploy the excess labour in other companies. But they are not listening. The company will not survive if they continue to step up pressure,” the official said.
HPL officials also alleged the productivity of most of these casual workers is very low. “They are unskilled workers. In Gujarat, if you change contractors, the new contractor has the right to deploy a new set of workers. But here, you cannot do that. And we cannot change the contractors either because no good contractor is willing to come,” an official said.
Milan Mondal, working president of the INTTUC-affiliated HPL casual workers’ union, does not think casual labourers at HPL are in excess. “This is a ploy to get rid of workers,” he said.
Amid a fierce battle among INTTUC factions for control of unions, HPL’s highly skilled permanent employees — numbering around 400 and most of them engaged in technical jobs — are putting up a brave face. A majority of them have shunned unions affiliated to a political organization.
Narayan Chakraborty, an employee of plant materials department, said Citu had forced them to form a union a few years back but they never took active part in the union’s
activities. “Now, the Citu union exists only on paper. They do not have any influence on us. If INTTUC approaches us, we will say no,” he said. Dibakar Karmakar, an employee of the instrumentation department and Dipnarayan Sarkar, who works in logistics, share the same view. “Why should we form a union when we can approach the management on our own?” Sarkar said.
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