Protesting against the sacking of employees at the Tapukara plant of Honda Motorcycle Scooter India, five workers of the company today started an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar here.
"Five (of the) victimised workers of Tapukara unit of HMSI started their hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, Parliament Street today," an All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) press statement said.
Comments from HMSI could not be obtained immediately.
AITUC claimed several workers from the Gurgaon-Manesar- Dharuhera industrial belt sat in Dharna to express their solidarity demanding taking back of 102 dismissed permanent workers and more than 2,000 contract workers of HMSI's Tapukara plant.
It stated that the HMSI management has "thrown out from service more than 2,000 contract workers and trainees and 102 regular workers" for trying to form a union at the Tapukara unit.
In February, trouble had erupted at the two-wheeler maker's Tapukara plant when protesting workers were lathicharged by police.
AITUC claimed that the workers have not been allowed to stage protest either in front of the factory in or in Alwar or Jaipur for the last seven months due to "pressure from the management of Japanese multinational".
It further said that the "victimised workers" will be submitting their memorandum to the Union Labour and Employment Minister for taking back the victimised workers.
D L Sachdev and Amarjeet Kaur, National Secretaries of AITUC and A K Sandhu of CITU were among those who addressed the gathering of workers at Jantar Mantar.
Union leaders of other companies, including Maruti Suzuki, Suzuki Motorcycle, Munjal Showa and Hema Engineering, along with representatives of PUDR, PUCL and Bigul Mazdoor Dasta also addressed the meeting.
On Honda's current product line-up, Ueno said the BR-V is
doing well and "it's on track" of the target set by the company. However it is not doing as well as some other brands. I think we might be able to increase sales".
He admitted that there is a mismatch in the company's product line-up and expectations of the customers.
"Currently, we are concentrating on really matching price with the competitors. Maybe, the specifications are not meeting the customers' expectations. So, such kinds of discrepancies I think are happening," he said.
Ueno felt that the company cannot afford to give up on volume products like Brio and Amaze and would like to reposition them in the market with better features.
"They are big volume market (products). However, maybe, the positioning in the segment can be aligned. Honda cars have been on the premium side within the segments. I think we can do it," he said.
Honda is receiving a lot of feedback from customers that it should have more features even if the the price might be on the higher side.
"For the future models, we are planning to add more features. We were thinking that Indian car market is price sensitive. However, customer expectations have to be balanced," Ueno made it clear.
According to the CEO, the company has just taken a price hike and most probably will take a call again on the issue only next year.
"Exchange rate is tough. So, if it continues to be so, then slight adjustment may be necessary, but definitely not this year. We have just increased the prices. This year, we won't touch the prices. Next year due to GST, there might be a one-time alignment," he said.
Asked if the company would keep selling MPV Mobilio, he said: "We will continue. Sales are gradually increasing. So, we will keep it.
