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R.Y. Narayanan

COIMBATORE, May 20

NEARLY two lakh workers employed in the hosiery industry in Tirupur have threatened to go on strike for two days from tomorrow to press their demand for revision of wages pending since February even as management and trade union representatives have stuck to their respective stand on the contentious issue of productivity-linked wages.

The local ruling party MLA, Mr Sivasamy, for the third time brought both the parties together yesterday for discussions in a bid to hammer out a solution but an acceptable formula still proved to be elusive.

On their part, the management representatives, including from Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) and the South India Hosiery Manufacturers' Association (SIHMA), who have been insisting on productivity-linked wages, yielded some ground by agreeing for an interim wage increase in rupee terms provided a final settlement on linking productivity with wages is arrived at.

Speaking to Business Line from Tirupur, Mr Mohan Kandasamy, All-India President, Federation of Hosiery Manufacturers' Association and also President of SIHMA, said the managements wanted the issue of workload to be decided first before any negotiation on wage revision. He said the concept of productivity-linked wages was often talked about in the past at the time of wage revision but now a situation has come when the managements had to take a firm stand on it.

He said with the opening up of the industry in the next two years, the manufacturers have to brace themselves up for increasing competition from imports and if they were to retain their cost competitiveness, an agreed formula on labour productivity was a pre-requisite.

He said the management representatives, in response to the plea made by Mr Sivasamy agreed as an interim measure for a flat increase in wages pending a final settlement on the issue of productivity. The unions were insisting on percentage-wise increase in wages, which they wanted to be settled first before any decision on productivity.

Mr Kandasamy, asked about the status of the talks in view of the planned labour strike for two days from tomorrow, regretted that the threat has come even as the wage negotiations were continuing and it had not ended in a failure. The talks would be resumed on Saturday but the strike sounded a jarring note, he said.

Mr A. Sakthivel, President, TEA, said the managements had offered an additional payment of Rs 5 and Rs 3 to the existing daily wages for skilled and unskilled workers respectively as an interim measure pending finalisation of productivity-linked wages.

He said the proposed two-day strike on May 21 and 22 (the first day of which is part of the all India strike called by the labour unions in the country), was not a setback to the talks and it did not mean that the talks had reached a dead-end.

He was confident that the efforts to find a solution to the wage revision issue would bear fruit.

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