[Reader-list] Lock-out at Hindustan Lever

[NAGRAJ ADVE]

Shudda, Jeebesh, Monica,
Please put this on the reader-list email network.
warmly, naga

On 21 March, the management of Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL), the Indian
subsidiary of Unilever, declared a lock-out at its Garden Reach Factory in
Kolkata. About 1,500 workers have been on the streets opposing the lock-out
for over two months.

For over two years, the HLL management has resisted settling the union's
charter of demands. They wish to impose a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS)
on 500 permanent workers, dismiss 150 other contract workers, and close down
some operations of the Garden Reach factory. This is part of two, much
longer processes within Hindustan Lever in India: one, shifting production
sites from older, larger factories within metropolises to backward areas
where workers are not organized and also availing of tax breaks and
government subsidies; and two, subcontracting parts of the production
process, or the manufacture of entire products to smaller factories.
Production at the Garden Reach factory has halved between 1998 and 2002,
even as HLL's India-wide profits have soared to Rs 1,754 crores in 2002.

The workers have demanded a settlement of the charter of demands; job
security; a peaceful and working atmosphere inside the factory; withdrawal
of any forced VRS. Opposition to the management's plans have resulted in
workers facing arbitrary pay-cuts, charge-sheets, transfers, and forced
idleness in the factory. When workers went on a three-day strike opposing
these policies, the management imposed the lock-out.
Clearly, the management aims are not just outsourcing or garnering higher
profits, but also undermining the capacity of HLL's workers to collectively
bargain and struggle. It is part of a larger, widespread assault on workers'
political rights in India.
The workers and the union, the Hindustan Lever Sramik Karamchari Congress,
have urged groups and individuals to extend their solidarity and support to
the workers of HLL, in the following, and any other, ways:

1. Write to the Chief Minister, West Bengal, Writers' Building, Kolkata
700001 to prohibit the continuation of the lockout, under section 10(3) of
the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
2. Write to the Chairman of Hindustan Lever, 165-166, Backbay Reclamation
Area, Mumbai 400020 to lift the lockout, and preserve the employment of all
HLL's workers. 
3. Any other programmes of solidarity.



Nagraj Adve
Workers' Solidarity
Delhi