In order to counter any decline in production due to the four-week stand-off with workers at its Manesar plant, Maruti Suzuki has stepped up recruitment of temporary workers from skill development centres. In a statement issued on Monday, the company said it has been able to ?neutralise? the impact of the strike.
The company said that the total strength of manpower at Manesar had reached over 1,380 which included engineers from its Gurgaon facility and existing supervisors at Manesar. Due to the increased manpower total production of Swift reached 700 units during the day, the company said. This is in line with the company?s Swift production target, sources said.
?The spurt in Swift?s bookings is due to daily production now exceeding normal production levels for this model, neutralising the impact of the current labour issue at Manesar plants,? the company said in a statement. On Saturday, total bookings for Swift reached 1.08 lakh. ?The development has given confidence to customers regarding availability of Swift. Though the company had not stopped bookings, the production of Swift had slowed due to the ongoing labour agitation at Manesar,? Maruti said.
Maruti added that the labour problems forced the company to concentrate on ?single model manufacturing? of the Swift since bookings had crossed the 50,000 mark in just a week of its launch. The company is now expecting Swift production to reach 17,500 units ? a tad higher than the earlier target set of 17,000 units. Since the labour troubles started the company was forced to shift a large chunk of the production of the Swift to Gurgaon to initiate production at the earliest lest customers start shying away from the car due to long waiting periods. The company said that the temporary workers it had recruited over the last three weeks from ITIs were put through structured training programmes ranging from 3 to 21 days.
Meanwhile, sources said that the representatives of the workers union at Gurgaon Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union were trying to broker peace between the management and the workers of Manesar. The company has maintained over the last four weeks that the workers at Manesar would be permitted to resume production on the condition that they sign the good conduct bond.
According to a source amidst the striking workers, a big chunk of workers are willing to sign the bond provided only if the company agrees to take back the suspended workers. At least 62 workers have been suspended since the stir started.