Apollo Seeks Government Help Over Lockout

Management at Apollo Tyres, who instigated a lockout at the company’s factory in Kerala, India, are now seeking local government intervention. According to local media sources, the lockout was declared at 1am on August 16 in response to a strike by workers that began two days earlier.

“We feel it is only the labour ministry in the state that can intervene and settle the issue, because even after making an additional capital investment of Rs 150 million (£1.86 million) three months ago, production has not gone up,” an Apollo Tyres official told the Indo-Asian News Service, requesting anonymity.

In a statement issued at the Kerala facility on August 18, Apollo Tyres said it was left with no other option when workers refused to begin their shifts on August 14 and instead launched an “illegal and unjustified strike”, bringing sections of the manufacturing process to a halt. “To enable us to tide over the current high natural rubber, crude, crude-based raw material, transportation and energy costs, despite negotiations with the unions for the past few months, there has been no solution and the unions have taken a negative and non-cooperative attitude to any production increases, despite the offer of production-linked monetary benefits and incentives,” the statement said.

The company is said to be suffering a production loss of Rs 50 million (£618,000) a day and the Government is losing Rs 3 million (£37,000) in excise duty. The trouble started when factory’s capacity was increased from 280 to 318 tonnes a day, yet employees refused to bridge the idle time between shifts to keep the plant equipment running. In order to cut down costs and maintain quality, the factory reportedly also implemented changes in the product mix, a decision that was resisted by the workers. As a consequence, some export schedules as well as production for the domestic market were disrupted.

“The labour problems at the plant are mainly due to worker’s resisting capacity expansion at the facility. Though we had announced our plans to expand production some time ago, it was only since the last few days that we began the actual groundwork to increase capacity,” said an Apollo Tyres spokesperson.

Apollo said it would ensure that there was no shortfall in supplies of cross ply tyres due to the lockout.