Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), India's largest passenger car maker, is expecting to regain the full employee strength at the Manesar plant by the last week of September, 2012. Company is confident about this owing to the fresh recruitment conducted by it.
Speaking at the annual convention of Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India, Chief Operating Officer, Supply Chain, MSIL, S. Maitra, said, “The regularisation of contract workers and new recruitments are going on and this will be over in the next 10 days. By the last week of September, our total manpower will be in place at Manesar plant.”
At its troubled manufacturing unit in Manesar, there were nearly 3,300 workers before the unfortunate incident, which claimed the life of one senior HR executive and left hundreds of workers injured. The plant was in a state of lockout since July 18, 2012 when the violent conflict took place and was restarted on August 21, 2012. On restarting the operations at the Manesar plant, the car maker removed 500 permanent employees from its payroll and has done away with the contract workers who were involved in the riot. Despite a strong protest by the worker unions, MSIL is adamant about not reinstating the fired employees.
Commenting on the production process being normalised, Maitra added, ”By around the end of September the second shift will start... We are ramping production at the plant at the moment and working in single shift. In the next three to four days we will reach the full production capacity of a single shift, which was about 700 units earlier (before the July 28 violence).”
As of now the Manesar plant is manufacturing all the four models viz. DZire, Swift, SX4 and A-Star. However, the company is quite optimistic about covering the losses incurred during the lockout period most probably by October, 2012. Manesar plant, which has an annual production capacity of 5.5 lac unit, was manufacturing 1,500-1,700 units every day before the violent incident that changed the whole scenario. It is now left for all to see how the company makes a comeback amidst the heightened security measures and new recruitment policies.
