New Delhi: The six-day long strike by contract workers of Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) was called off on Sunday morning, the company said.
The contract workers went on strike on Tuesday demanding regularisation of employment, days after the HMSI management signed a three settlement with the regular employees.
"The strike is over as an agreement has been reached between the workers and their contractor," HMSI Vice-President General Affairs HS Shekhawat said. He added the workers would be resuming their duties from Monday.
"They have withdrawn all their demands and have agreed to join work from Monday," he said, however, stating that the details of the agreement were awaited as it was reached between the contractors and the casual workers and the management was not a party to it.
The agreement follows an order by a civil court in Gurgaon, which had ordered the local administration, including police, to evict striking contract workers from the company premises at Manesar.
Shekhawat said the court ordered that the striking contract workers, estimated to be around 200, be evicted from the company's Manesar plant and prohibited any gathering by them within a radius of 300 meters from the factory's main gate.
The company management, however, insisted that the demand of the contract workers was illegal. "Under the laws, any contract labour who has 240 days of continuous employment in preceding 12 months is entitled to permanent employment. In fact, the Delhi High Court had ruled that contract labour be considered for regularisation only when a vacancy exists," Shekhawat said.
In case of HMSI's striking contract workers, many had completed just about 100 days, he added. "In any case, we don't hire contract workers for more than 180 days in a year.
So the question of exploitation does not arise. We also make it a point to inform the workers about this clause beforehand," he said.
This was the second brush with labour unrest for HMSI, a fully-owned two-wheeler subsidiary of Japan's Honda Motor Co.
The company had last year witnessed one of the worst labour unrest when some of its striking workers, mostly regulars, were brutally beaten up by Haryana police personnel while they were protesting against the dismissal of fellow workers and demanding formation of a labour union.
HMSI is a leader in the scooter market and has also forayed into the bike market. The company has a daily production of around 1,800 scooters and 700 bikes.
Asked whether output was hit due to the unrest, Shekhawat maintained that the production was "normal and as per sales plans".
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