Management & Unions Meet to Discuss MRF Lockout

Managers from the MRF tyre plant at Tiruvottiyur in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu met with union representatives on December 7 in an attempt to resolve the deadlock over the factory lockout that began four days earlier. Plant management announced an indefinite lockout on December 3, the result of their claim of employee indiscipline and inability to meet productivity norms. A previous meeting on December 5 failed to resolve the issue.

“Productivity norms have not been met for the past two years. We had set some norms, which were to be achieved, but have not been. So we declared a token lockout on November 30, to see if the issue could be resolved,” Koshy Verghese, vice-president, Marketing, MRF Ltd., told India’s PTI news service. Verghese added that “indiscipline” existed amongst employees, with some “not willing” to be re-deployed in different sections of the company. In response, the president of the union representing company employees claimed the company was avoiding the resolution of a number of outstanding issues.

According to Verghese, the Tiruvottiyur facility, the original factory site where the company was founded in 1946, produces 10 per cent of MRF’s tyre production, Should talks between the company and union fail the production of truck, agricultural and OTR tyres there would most likely be affected. Other MRF facilities could not compensate for any shortfall in output, he added, as they were all operating at full capacity.