Shiv Sena protests lay-offs at Big Bazaar

THE OTHER INDIA

Shiv Sena's workers' union Bhartiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) forced closure of all three stores of Kishore Biyani controlled Big Bazaar in the city following termination of the services of 120 workers from its Kandivali facility on Saturday. However, by evening both the parties reached a settlement and all the three units started functioning.

The reason behind Sena's aggressive posturing was its 'sons of soil' agenda, as almost 100 out of the 120 terminated employees of Big Bazaar were Maharashtrians. Recently, Sena's working president Uddhav Thackeray had demanded reservation of 80 per cent jobs in BPOs, malls, large retail outfits and multiplexes for Maharashtrians.

BKS general secretary Kiran Pavaskar said, "BKS had unions at Lower Parel and Mulund facilities of Big Bazaar. Last month, Big Bazaar employees from Kandivali unit also joined our union."

"The management obviously didn't like members getting unionised, hence they terminated services of all their employees from Kandvali store and released an advertisement in a prominent Marathi newspaper for recruitment.

"This really angered our members, following which we decided to close down all the three units," he said.

"Due to the closure of the stores, the management was forced to come to the negotiating table and give us a letter stating that the termination of services of all the 120 employees has been revoked and they can join their duties from Monday. Besides, they also assured us to hold negotiations on Tuesday on our all pending demands," claimed Pavaskar.

Meanwhile, when contacted, a company spokesman said, "The company was in its own rights to terminate the services of all these employees as the employee contract clearly states that services of an employee can be terminated by giving him or her seven days notice."