New Delhi: A week after the Reliance Industries Board approved the merger of IPCL with itself, there seems to a whole bunch of people who are very uneasy.
Workers of IPCL are considering a strike on Tuesday in protest against the move. The General Secretary of the employee's union has accused the management of not consulting workers over crucial decisions.
This is a classic issue of rightsizing versus downsizing - while the employees claimed that the company is downsizing, the company claimed that it is rightsizing. This has been going on for last five years since Reliance took over IPCL. They have introduced a couple of VRS in 2003 and 2005 and third one in 2007.
The real trigger at this stage is transfer of over about 1000 people. The employees claimed that Reliance has transferred almost 1000 people from Baroda to its Jamnagar refinery, which is coming up at the new site in Jamnagar.
So they are saying that these people have been working here for over two-three decades and they all come from nearby villages and many of them are unskilled labour who would not like to move from Baroda to Jamnagar. They are saying that company had promised them to there would be a short-term transfer but they fear it would not be a short-term one but a long-term one. So they basically do not want to move from Baroda to Jamnagar.
As per the company, they have issued a statement late last evening saying that they have to go for these transfers because they have to make people available with them and they need people in Jamnagar refinery and many of the IPCL plants at Baroda have already closed down because of the vintage technology. The average age of the employee at Baroda plant is also very high and it becomes unviable and uneconomical for them to operate.
So they are saying that they have not forced the VRS down the throats of the employees but they have no other option but to move some people, many of them unskilled, from Baroda to Jamnagar. So the issue will take a long time before it comes to any kind of solution because both parties are not willing to blink at the first move.
With excerpts from moneycontrol.com
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