The Hindu Business Line : Dunlop Chennai unit restarts again

HAPPY DAYS AGAIN: Mr Pawan Kumar Ruia, Chairman, Dunlop India Ltd, with the workers at the reopening of the factory at Ambattur in Chennai on Monday. — K. Pichumani

Chennai , April 10

A boisterous procession, fireworks bursting, traffic at a standstill at the industrial suburb, Ambattur here, so what? It is election time.

But no, this was not politics. It was Dunlop restarting... again.

Dunlop workers, over a 1,000 of them, took out a procession from the office of the Dunlop Factory Employees Union to the factory premises, DFEU flags waving, colourful pennants and festoons lining the roads.

The factory has opened its gates to the workers after it suspended operations in 1998.

This time under a new management, the Kolkata-based Ruia Group, which had acquired Dunlop from the Jumbo Group last December.

Dunlop suspended operations here in 1998 and had remained shut except for a short stint in 2000 when it restarted as a `holding operation' only to close down within one year. The factory has been out of production since then.

Time to rejoice

To the workers this was a time to rejoice. No matter that in 2000 the factory had opened with similar fanfare to close shortly afterwards. This time it is a new management, a management whose top brass was here promising to continue production - certainly a reason for optimism.

As the procession entered the factory, Mr P.K. Ruia, Chairman, Dunlop India Ltd, was there to greet them.

As the Dunlop Factory Employees Union (DFEU) President, Mr D. Krishnaswamy, and the General Secretary, Mr D. Devanathan, walked along with Mr Ruia to the power generation unit, to the chant of priests, the state of disuse of the plant was self-evident.

Addressing reporters after the inaugural ceremony, Mr A. Krishnaswamy, said that maintenance work would restart with nearly 50 workers from tomorrow. More workers would join in from next week and by August-end the production would commence with the first tyre rolled out. Over six months of negotiations and 10 rounds of hard bargaining had gone into the restart effort.

The agreement between the workers and the management was for a three-year period and also provided for a retirement scheme to bring down the work force by about 300 from about 1,200.

Apart from the statutory payments they would get between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1.25 lakh depending on the duration of service remaining. Mr Devanathan said the workers were entirely committed to working with management.

Addressing workers, Mr Ruia struck a cautionary note, "the existing situation is precarious," he said. The company faces liabilities of over Rs 650 crore apart from issues relating to sales tax, excise, power, unsecured depositors, dealers deposits... the list goes on.