Bosch Ltd offers striking workers Rs 20k more a month

Component maker Bosch Ltd says it is willing to offer a handsome deal to its striking workers. The Workmen Union of Bosch Ltd’s Bangalore plant declared an illegal strike starting from the first shift of September 16, 2014. This strike has now entered into its third month and has adversely impacted not only the company but also the workmen with heavy financial losses.

According to the company, despite the challenging business situation, it has put forth its best wage and benefits offer to the Bangalore plant Workmen Union. Bosch Ltd is already one of the best paymasters in the manufacturing industry. With the proposed wage offer, the current cost to company (CTC) of an average workman will increase from Rs 64,000 a month to upwards of Rs 85,000 per month for 7 to 7.5 hours of work in an 8-hour shift. Considering the indexing (inflation), the proposed CTC will further increase substantially. This revised wage offer, says Bosch, will retain the company's workmen compensation as one of the best in the manufacturing industry in the country.

The company’s statement says that, at present, the Bangalore plant has by far the lowest productivity amongst the Bosch plants in India. “The productivity target in our current proposal is based on international industrial engineering standards, and the same is well accepted and followed across all Bosch plants worldwide. Implementation of such standards is imperative to ensure the Bangalore plant’s competitiveness from a long-term perspective. Our untrained white collar employees, who are supporting production during this strike have easily met these productivity targets,” says the Bosch Ltd statement.

Currently, the Bangalore plant has approximately 370 temporary and around 2,500 permanent Workmen. Despite the fact that in future, the company is likely to have excess manpower due to changes in product mix towards more automated processes required to support modern engines and latest emission legislation, the company has offered to confirm 100 of the 370 temporary Workmen.

Over the past two months, intensive wage discussions have been held at various levels including intervention of concerned government departments and state government authorities but to no avail. Therefore, the Bosch Management has urged the striking Union to call off the indefinite illegal strike, restore normalcy and conclude the wage settlement at the earliest.

The company’s interim measures to meet customer demand are continuing, through deployment of alternate resources on production line, provisionally sourcing products from its international production network and utilizing built up inventory.