Big Bazaar in trouble over job cuts

Shiv Sena's workers union Bhartiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) forced the closure of all three stores of Kishore Biyani-controlled, Big Bazaar in the city following the termination of 120 workers from its Kandivali facility on Saturday.

However by evening both parties reached a negotiated settlement and all three units started functioning.

The reason behind Sena's aggressive posturing is to pursue its sons of soil agenda as almost 100 out of 120 terminated employees of Big Bazar were Maharashtrians.

And recently Sena's working president Uddhav Thackeray had demanded 80 per cent jobs in BPOs, malls, large retail outfits and multiplexes to be reserved for Maharashtrians.

Speaking with Business Standard general secretary of the BKS, Kiran Pavaskar said, "BKS had unions at Lower Parel and Mulund facilities of Big Bazar, last month Big Bazar employees from Kandivali unit also joined our union."

Management obviously didn't liked members getting unionised, hence they terminated services of all their employees from Kandvali store and released an advertisement in the prominent Marathi newspaper for recruitment on Sunday, this really angered our members following which, we decided to close down all three units.

Due to the closure of all three stores, management was forced to come to negotiating tables and give us a letter stating that termination of all 120 employees has been revoked and they can join their duties from Monday, claimed Pavaskar.

Besides this they also assured us to hold negotiations on our charter of demands on Tuesday on our all pending demands, he added.

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

However there is no dispute now as an issue has been resolved amicably.