PremiumBENGALURU : Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Monday termed the strike by its employees as ‘illegal’ indicating that the two sides are yet to resolve their differences in wage revision bringing production to a grinding halt on the factory floors of India’s biggest aircraft maker.
Almost 18,000 workers--scale V to scale XI employees--across nine units in seven states began an indefinite strike against the management demanding fair revision of wages after it alleged that the company was following discriminatory practices between workmen and officers.
The management on Monday said that the company was offering best revised package.
“The HAL Management’s offer is reasonable, fair and in conformity with the wage agreements finalized by other Defence PSUs. Instead of appreciating this the Unions have come up with the demands that are unviable in the current and futuristic business scenario. The unsustainability and untenability has been explained to the Unions several times," the company said in a statement on Monday.
The workers, who have blocked all gates of HAL premises on Old Airport Road in Bengaluru, said that the management was discriminating between executives and workers.
“The management’s contention is that the company's financial position is bad, so we will not be extending the same thing (hikes) as the executives," Suryadev Chandrashekar, General secretary and convenor of All India HAL Trade Union Coordination Committee said in Bengaluru on Monday.
In a statement on Sunday, the union said that workers had given the management an offer of 11% fitment benefit and 22% perks for 1 to 10 Scale & 20% perks for SS 1 Scale. It said that if the management had accepted this offer, there unions would withdraw the strike.
“The management does not have any intention to complete this," Chandrashekar said while adding that the denial to fulfil workers demands were deliberate.
HAL, that found itself in the middle of a political slugfest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress in the alleged Rafale fighter aircraft scandal, recorded a turnover of ₹19400 crores and a profit of ₹3500 crore.
Shares of the public listed company was trading at ₹717.00, down 0.22% on Monday.
