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A day after the month-long Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) in Nokia's Indian facility, for which around 5,000 employees opted, the remaining employees hope to see the government interference to protect their jobs remains futile. While a majority of employees in the factory opted for the VRS "a forcible option", the rest of the workers were hoping that the Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who returned from her vacation in Kodanadu, will give some positive result for them.
The facility in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, which has been one of the major handset manufacturing hub for the Finnish global major, today had only around 800-1,000 employees working, according to workers. While over 5,000 of the total 6,700 employees has opted for the VRS left with no better choice, the small number of workers stuck to their jobs in the hope that there would be some headway on the current situation faced by the facility.
Employees fear that if it cannot run the factory with the remaining workers, the factory might lead to closure. Responding to the allegation, Nokia commented earlier, "Nokia intends to respect commitments under the services contract".
A worker who did not opt for the VRS, said that the remaining workers are living in a hope that either that the State government would interfere in the issue, or the company might manage to work with the rest of the workers or would come out with another scheme where their would be a higher compensation offered. Two days back the workers representatives have met the State Industries Minister and requested the Government to interfere in the matter.
A Soundararajan, honorary PRESIDT of Nokia India Employees Union, said that the workers has not heard anything from the State government so far. "We have not decided anything. Everything depends on what the management would do next," he said.
Attempts to reach the State government officials for a comment were not successful.
Meanwhile, according to sources, the major suppliers of Nokia near the factory are also suffering from lack of orders and higher manpower cost and rumours are there that they would also go for a manpower reduction. Some of the suppliers have already reduced the number of routes of bus service offered to the emplohees as a means of transport.
Nokia has announced the VRS programme on April 10, which became open for the workers from April 15, 2013. The first few days saw the entire more than 730 trainees opting for the scheme. However, with the VRS ended on Wednesday, it said that almost 5,000 employees have opted for the Scheme. Workers have raised doubts that with over 5,000 out of the total 6,700 workers opting for VRS, whether there would be enough workers available for the company to continue its contract manufacturing operations for Microsoft.
Earlier, the Union has demanded the company to withdraw the Scheme and announced that it will not accept VRS. However employees came out in group to opt for VRS, which is a voluntary scheme by nature, and opted for the scheme, with the company's future found to be dark.
Nokia could not transfer the facility to Microsoft, which agreed to buy Nokia's device and service business globally for $7.44 billion, along with the workers due to the tax dispute between the Income Tax Department and the company.
Nokia has also announced a Bridge initiative under which it is offering banking consultancy services and employment outlook trainings. Besides, it is also introducing several new initiatives under the Bridge to provide added support to the employees, in active consideration with the Union, it said.
It may be noted that the Sriperumbudur facility of Nokia Corporation, which has been manufacturing various low end handsets and the Asha series of phones earlier, has caught in the middle of a dispute between Nokia and the Income Tax Department, which claimed that the company need to pay around Rs 21,000 crore on its alleged tax liability since 2006-07. The company also received a Rs 2,400 crore tax notice from Tamil Nadu government. Against these claims, the company moved to different Courts and still pursuing some of the cases.
