Ceat to retain staff in face of recession

MUMBAI, Dec 9: Ceat Ltd, the tyre flagship of the RPG group, is moving against the recessionary tide. The company's management has insist...

MUMBAI, Dec 9: Ceat Ltd, the tyre flagship of the RPG group, is moving against the recessionary tide. The company’s management has insisted that all its 3,900 workers remain in employment, irrespective of any restructuring or modernisation plans the company intends to implement.

In a recently signed agreement of the company with its workers at the Bhandup unit in Mumbai, Maharashtra, the Ceat management has emphasised it will not cut any jobs. If any any employee is rendered redundant as a result of a modernisation plan he will promptly be redeployed in some other division of the company without any change in service condition or any cut in wages.

In case the employees are not satisfied with the redeployment, they are free to choose a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) that the company has tailored taking into account the number of years of service and the age of the employees. The scheme is currently awaiting approval from the income tax authorities.

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The optional VRS has the following benefits: Itoffers 45 days of pay for each year of completed service, and if an employee is above 55 years of age, he would be paid a maximum retirement benefit of 36 months of salary. For both categories of benefits the employees will be paid gratuity, provident fund and other benefits as per the normal retirement schedule.

The modernisation process planned by the company involves regular technology upgradations. The mixing department of the company plans to change certain processes. As the pollution control board raised objections about carbon pollution, the company is currently planning to outsource carbon batches and gradually outsource them entirely. Currently, the company has inserted extra dampers to control pollution at the division.

The company’s textile division, which makes certain specialised fibres for tyres, now has idle employees from its third shift as there was work for just two shifts. The management has therefore decided to spread the excess employees in the other shifts or effect inter-departmenttransfers.

Ceat Tyres has two factories in Maharashtra, one at Bhandup in Mumbai and the other at Nashik. The Mumbai unit has about 2,200 employees while the Nashik unit has about 1,700 employees. The third unit of the company was at Aurngabad, also in Maharashtra, had been transferred to a joint venture with Goodyear. Ceat withdrew from the joint venture earlier this year.