Hyundai workers gear up for negotiated settlement

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SME Times News Bureau | 30 Jan, 2012
The United Union of Hyundai Employees (UUHE), the only recognised union at the plant of car maker Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) near here, seems to be veering towards a negotiated settlement with the company management.

"Labour issues are to be settled through talks. Violence on the part of police or workers should not have any role in settling the labour issues," K. Dilli Babu, UUHE president, told IANS as the union gears up to hold its first office bearer election inside the factory premises next month.

Babu was reacting to the violence at the private Regency Ceramics factory in Yanam, an enclave of Puducherry in Andhra Pradesh, Friday that led to the lynching of a top official of the unit after a union leader allegedly died in police action.

The Feb 2-3 election would be the first office bearer election inside the factory premises in 13 years, Treasurer E.K. Kumaraswamy said.

For the past several years, HMIL has been embroiled in labour tensions at its Sriperumbudur plant. It had refused to recognise the employees union on the ground that the company has a works committee to take care of workers' issues.

But as the committee has no legal standing, workers got registered a trade union, Hyundai Motor Employees Union (HMIEU), affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the trade union arm of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

But HMIL then said it would recognise an apolitical union, paving the way for UUHE last year. UUHe is also the union with maximum number of workers under its wings.