Toyota declares lockout at Bidadi plant

By Ameya Naik

1 mins read

Published on March 17, 2014

Highlights

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), has declared a lockout at its manufacturing facility in Bidadi industrial estate near Bangalore with effect from Sunday the 16th of March. The decision on the lock-out comes after failure of talks between the management and the workers union over wage negotiation followed by labour unrest in the factory premises. Toyota Kirloskar Motors says that the management and the union have been discussing the charter of demands for the fiscal year 2013-14 for the past 10 months. As a bipartite agreement was not reached, the Labour Department of the Karnataka government conducted seven tripartite meetings to reach a settlement but these have not yet resulted in an agreement. In the meantime, the company claimed that a certain section of employees have resorted to deliberate stoppages of the production line, abuse and threatening of supervisors thereby continuously disrupting business for the past 25 days. All these details have been listed in the lockout notice. As a result, TKM says it was left with no other option but to declare a lockout to ensure the safety of its workers and management personnel. Toyota has two manufacturing units at its integrated factory complex in Bidadi industrial estate, which boasts of a combined annual production capacity of 310,000 units. With the company on the verge of launching the new Corolla, their only 'real' new product launch in India soon followed by the Etios Cross and a few facelifts, the news does come as a setback for the car manufacturer.