Bangalore: The State Government has prohibited the workers' strike at Bidadi plant of carmaker Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Ltd. and has referred all issues such as dismissal of three employees by the management, subsequent strike by the employees and the lockout to additional labour court for adjudication.

"The order prohibiting the strike was issued by the Principal Secretary (Labour) on Saturday.

"The order asked the additional labour court to decide whether the dismissal of workers, the strike and lockout were justified or not and what were the relief for persons involved in this," R. Ravi, Joint Secretary, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Employees' Union, affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, told The Hindu on Monday.

General body meeting

Following the Government's order, the union convened a general body meeting in which it was decided that the workers will resume duty from Tuesday, but without giving any good conduct declaration as stipulated by the management while lifting the lock-out from January 21 (Saturday), Mr. Ravi said.

"We will go to the factory gates on Tuesday and urge the management to allow the employees to work without taking any undertaking from us.

If the management insists on signing the good conduct declaration, we will not go to work. Not allowing us to work will be nothing but lockout.

In such an event, we will request the Government to prohibit the lockout," Mr. Ravi said.

Management unrelenting

The management said it would not budge from its stand that the workers would have to sign a good conduct undertaking before resuming work.

"The declaration is normal industrial practice in the event of workmen reporting for duty after a strike.

There is nothing in the declaration that constitutes unfair labour practice.

There are no changes in the service conditions either.

Violence threat

The only reason for seeking such a declaration is because of the large-scale violence during the strike and the threat of the workmen to blow up liquefied petroleum gas tanks in the company premises.

Hence, we want to underline the basic fundamentals of employment through this simple document", A.R. Shankar, general Manager, Corporate Planning, Toyota Kirloskar Motors, said.

Although Toyota Kirloskar Motors had lifted the lock-out from Saturday, the union had urged the Government to pass orders as recommended by the Labour Commissioner after two rounds of conciliatory talks failed to arrive at a settlement.

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