Dharna at Jantar Mantar against Voltas - a TATA enterprise on 26 September, Monday

Press Release: 25 September 2011, New Delhi:

The All India Voltas Employees Federation, representing permanent and contract workers of Voltas Limited, will sit on a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi from 26 September 2011 against the regressive recruitment policy pursued by the Company over the last 15 years in complete violation of the bilateral agreement signed between the company and the union.

Voltas, a TATA group company, with an annual business turnover of over US$ 1 Billion and one of India’s leading air-conditioning, refrigeration and engineering services companies, has stopped recruitment of permanent workers. For the last 15 years, the Company has been recruiting workers only on a contract basis. At present, Voltas employs 8000 contract workers, 3000 management staff and only 600 permanent workers. This policy severely undermines the collective bargaining capacity of the workers. Of the 3000 workers given appointment as management staff, more than half of them perform the responsibilities of ‘workers’ but are paid a salary 3 times higher than a worker performing the same work, thereby violating the basic principal of ‘equal pay for equal work’.

Voltas is yet to implement the wage agreement signed five years ago as well as pay the bonus for the last financial year of 2009-10. But the salary of the management staff has been regularly revised along with paying them performance linked awards for performing their normal duties.

Voltas has also resorted to arm twisting the protesting workers by bringing in the police to intimidate and physically remove the peaceful agitators from the Mumbai office where the union activists have been on a relay hunger strike for the last 140 days. When the workers resisted the police from coming inside the establishment, the leadership of the union as well as other activists was suspended.

Voltas, in the meanwhile has also sold its Material Handling business division at the Thane Factory to a Joint Venture for Rs. 110 crore, putting the employment of around 120 workers working at this division at stake. The new company is not ready to give any assurance regarding their job security.

While Voltas in its CSR statement commits to ‘involve itself in projects that bring about upliftment in the lives of the underprivileged and the deprived’ and to ‘improving the quality of life of communities we serve’, it has grossly violated rights of its own employees with impunity and has even refused to honour the collective bargaining agreements agreed by them.

Ravi Nambiar
General Secretary, ALL INDIA VOLTAS EMPLOYEES FEDERATION, MUMBAI
+91-9819080993

Delhi Office Address:
G.K. Pal, General Secretary
VOLTAS EMPLOYEES UNION, DELHI
A-43, Mohan-Co-Operative Industrial Estate,
Mathura Road, New Delhi-110044
Mob: +91-9911142779