By IANS,
Chennai : Nokia India workers, on strike after 55 employees were suspended earlier this week, refused to end their agitation Thursday despite being asked by the labour commissioner’s office to resume duty.
“The strike started Tuesday after the management suspended 35 employees. On Wednesday, another 20 employees were suspended,” an official of the Nokia India Employees Progressive Union told IANS.
Workers were expected to resume work Thursday following a conciliatory meeting at the labour commissioner’s office the previous day.
The labour commissioner had issued an advisory to the union to resume work and also directed the management to sort out the row by Jan 25.
Incidentally, M. Shanmugam, general secretary of the Labour Progressive Front (LPF) — of which the Nokia union is an affiliate — had earlier told IANS that the issue had been sorted out. “Production will resume immediately,” he had said.
LPF is the labour wing of the ruling DMK party.
According to the Nokia workers’ union, the immediate cause of the strike was the transfer of an employee from one job to another.
“The human resource manager was curt and threatened us with suspension orders when we met him in connection with the shift change,” said a union official.
Nokia India is defending the move to suspend the workers. “Every company has certain codes and values, the violation of which cannot be brooked,” a company spokesperson told IANS.
The Nokia India plant can churn out around 500,000 mobile phones a day and has the highest productivity among all Nokia plants across the world.
The company has around 3,700 permanent workers (who are on strike), around 2,000 trainees and 1,000 contract workers.