GTWU is affiliated to the Indian National Trade Union Congress (Intuc). The Tinplate Co's managing director Bhusen Raina said, "the union played a very positive role in influencing the government's decision to fix a floor price for all tinplate imports." Apart from the Tata enterprise, the only other company in India which makes tinplates is Rourkela Steel Plant of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL). According to GTWU president Rakeshwar Pandey and general secretary R Appal Raju, when The Tinplate Co was reeling under heavydumping of tinplate prime and tinplate waste/waste and was crying for anti-dumping measures, the union came forward and Intuc president G Sanjeeva Reddy took up the case with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Union industry minister Sikander Bakht.

Hailing the government decision to fix a floor price below which tinplate imports would not be allowed, the union leaders said: "The measure will go a long way in bringing back The Tinplate Co from the brink of becoming a BIFR case and will save the livelihood of its thousands of employees."

It is probably the first instance where such an effort has been made by a recognised union.

The company has been suffering from heavy losses during the last two years. The loss in 1996-97 was Rs 27 crore and in 1997-98 it went up to Rs 61 crore. The process used in the company's hot dip plant (HDP) has become obsolete and the product is not viable. The Tinplate Co has been suffering losses owing to very low sale of HDP products. With the supply of sheet bars, thebasic raw material for the plant, grinding to a halt, the future of this plant is uncertain. Further, the company's cold rolling mill and ETP are running at a capacity utilisation of 50 per cent primarily owing to unfair competition from imports at dumped prices, mainly from Korea, Japan, Brazil, and Europe.