Dampening festive fun

Jamshedpur, Oct. 19: It will be a dark and depressing Diwali for a few hundred temporary workers at Tata Motors’ Jamshedpur plant.

After aviation giants, the automobile major, feeling the tremors of a global financial crisis, has pruned its staff strength. On Saturday, it laid off 300 of its 3,600 temporary workers at the plant.

Company officials said the layoff was spurred by the slump in the market that led to a cut in production target. The plant, currently, has 3,600 temporary workers.

Officials said the Jamshedpur and Lucknow plants of the automobile giant assembled chassis of heavy vehicles, production of which had come down in recent times.

Till August, the Jamshedpur plant of Tata Motors assembled 350-400 chassis a day. Currently, the target has come down to 225-250 per day.

The company’s spokesperson, on condition of anonymity, said the entire automobile sector was witnessing a slump because of which production had declined in recent months. He cited high interest rates for buying commercial vehicles as one of the major reasons behind this.

Dubbing the decision to downsize a normal process, the spokesperson said: “We hire or remove temporary workers on the basis of our production target. It is an old practice.”

Though Tata Motors plans to reinstate these 300 workers “when the situation improves”, the management and union leaders remained mum on their date of rejoining.

The company’s decision in the festive season has certainly brought with a pall of gloom.

“It is like a nightmare to lose your job just before Diwali. I was taken back only last month and there were indications of the situation improving. However, we cannot do anything now and will have to wait till the demand goes up,” said a worker, who has been temporarily laid off by the company.

Meanwhile, the decline in Tata Motors production target has also hit a large number of ancillary units based in the Adityapur industrial area.

More than 70 per cent of the 800 industrial units serve as ancillaries for Tata Motors. They provide spare parts for assembling the chassis. Industrialists say contract labourers based here would be the worst hit.

“Most of the small and medium-scale units manage their daily production with the help of contract labourers. Like Tata Motors, the ancillary units have already started downsizing their workforce. If the market situation does not improve soon, more temporary workers will lose their jobs,” said president of the Adityapur Small Industries Association (ASIA) S.N. Thakur.

Official records show 20,000 people work in Tata Motors’ ancillary units based in the Adityapur industrial area. Most of them are contract labourers.