New Delhi: Labour trouble is building up at the Talegaon plant (near Pune) of General Motors (GM) over talks to sell the facility to Hyundai, with a workers’ union threatening to carry out “massive protests” in case the acquirer does not hire them.
“We will repeat what happened in the protests case at Tata Motors’s factory at Nandigram in West Bengal, and what Maruti saw in the labour protests at Manesar around 2012,” labour union president Sandeep Bhegade told TOI.
Bhegade said there are nearly 1,100 workers who have been protesting for years after GM decided to shut its factory,and offered them a compensationthey found to be inadequate. “There are 1,086 workers who are yet to accept the offer. Our demand now is to be transferred to Hyundai in case the company buys the factory. ”
GM said workers do not have any say in the transaction with Hyundai. “Having legally separated former employees from the Talegaon site, the company offered impacted employees with a settlement package. The separation package was seven times the legal requirement, with the average payout equivalent to more than 3. 5 years of salary after tax,” a spokesperson for GM told TOI.