Calcutta, Feb. 21: Workers at Hindustan Motors (HM) have responded to a management appeal and joined executives in accepting a pay cut.

The across-the-board initiative is a rare, if not the first, instance in which gentle persuasion, not coercion, has yielded results at a time businesses are searching for ways to cope with the global economic downturn.

The gesture at Uttarpara, India’s original Motown, also betrays an anxiety and willingness among workers in Bengal, once considered the fountainhead of militant trade unionism, to go the extra mile to hold down jobs.

Executives at HM, the flagship company of the GP-CK Birla group, had agreed to a 10 per cent cut in salaries in November. Now, the workers on the shop floor at the carmaker’s Uttarpara factory have agreed to take a pay cut of Rs 400 a month for three months between January and March.

Yesterday, the 2,500 unionised employees at HM got their January salaries with a deduction of Rs 400 per worker. Soni Srivastava, the vice-president, corporate affairs, confirmed the development but added that the executives had agreed much earlier to a salary cut of 10 to 12.5 per cent. While the workers have agreed to a three-month wage cut, the executives have not set a time limit for their gesture.

Several Indian companies have started attacking mounting wage bills but this has been more through a fiat rather than negotiations. Airlines and information technology giants started trimming allowances and perks to tamp down on rising wage bills and trim overall costs. HM is arguably one of the first instances where workers at a manufacturing company have acquiesced to voluntary pay cuts.

“It was an unpleasant decision, but we had no alternative,” said Shantasree Chatterjee, MP and president of the Citu-led union at the Uttarpara factory.

“We had detailed discussions with the management and it was thought that a cut in wages was better than a shutdown of the plant,” Chatterjee added.

Insiders estimate that HM could save about Rs 25 lakh a month through this measure — a small but significant sum out of its monthly wage bill of about Rs 6 crore. In the three months ended December 2008, HM had a salary and wage bill of Rs 15.47 crore, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Malay Chowdhury, the executive vice-president and the man in charge of the Uttarpara factory, said the executives and senior management had shown the way with a great gesture to forgo a percentage of their salaries.

Chowdhury then made a similar appeal to the workers through a flier titled “Facing up to the challenge.” They responded overwhelmingly to the plea with over 85 per cent of the workers agreeing to the pay cut.

Chowdhury said the shop floor workers’ contribution to the cost saving would be about Rs 10 lakh a month. He refused to say how much was being saved because of the executives’ salary cuts.

HM has had to struggle through the downturn and has been churning out only a few Ambassador cars every week. Reports indicate that there are no orders on hand for the forging and the spare parts division.

The noble gesture by the workers and executives at HM is in stark contrast to the way the American carmakers — Ford, GM and Chrysler — approached the federal government for a $22-billion bailout recently. Last November, the three top honchos flew into Washington in their executive jets to press their case with Congress — and got rapped for their culture of extravagance.

The HM workers can, however, draw some comfort from Vikram Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, who announced last week that he would take a $1 annual salary with no bonus until he returned the financial services giant to profitability. Citigroup has received $45 billion as federal bailout money.