Honda Shuts Down Its Oldest Plant In India Over Employee Unrest; 2000 Contract Workers On Strike Since 9 Days

The oldest manufacturing plant of Honda in India, Manesar, has been shut down after the plant’s employees went on strike. 

It is evident from this that the misfortune of the automobile industry of India has not ended, and is not even close to ending.  

As much as 1500 employees have now been left jobless because of the sad state of affairs and losses faced by the automobile industries. 

Honda Shuts Down Its Oldest Plant in India Following Employees’ Strike

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) has declared that they will be shutting down its production plant starting Monday. 

The plant at Manesar was set up in 1999, which makes it 20 years old, and it is Honda’s oldest manufacturing plant in India. The plant has an installed capacity of 1.65 million units in a year. 

The company has issued a notice addressed to the heads of labour unions, citing reasons such as misconduct by the permanent employees, labour unions and contract staff of the company.  

In the notice, the plant head, Saibal Maitra said that the union urged the contract workers repeatedly to continue with their strike. Apparently, the employees’ act of sitting inside the company was also because of the spurring on by the union. 

The management ad contractors tried to convince them to resume normal working procedures, but the illegal activities of the union, company workers and contractual workers did not stop. 

The notice states, “Keeping all these points in mind, normal operations of the plant is not possible. Therefore, all associates are informed that normal operations of the plant are being suspended from Monday.”

Automobile Sector’s Downfall Is The Root Cause 

The automobile sector is currently at its worst conditions right now, with many a dealership, productions being closed down. Thousands of employees have been rendered jobless because of the downfall of the two-wheeler and four-wheeler industry. 

The sales of HMSI’s have fallen by 19 per cent to 2.68 million units during the H1 FY20, which is the maximum among the top 5 of the automobile companies that have faced losses in this hard time of automobile sectors.  

Given the depressing scenario at the automobile industry, Honda had to reduce its expenditures, which resulted in the retrenchment of contract workers at the Manesar plant in Haryana. 

Ramesh Pradhan, the secretary general of the plant’s labour union revealed that there were about 6000 two wheelers produced at the plant, which was reduced largely to about 3500 a day in November. 

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