HM employees opt for VRS

About 850 Hindustan Motors employees are reported to have accepted severance from the company under a voluntary retirement scheme introduced by the management in mid-October 1998. That still leaves a large number of surplus workers in company's Uttarpara plant, which has a workforce of 11,000.

For the Hindustan Motors management, pruning staff is not easy. Not only are Indian labour laws very sticky in this regard, being in the state of West Bengal, which is governed by a Marxist-led coalition renders this task doubly difficult.

The company's efforts to reduce costs by laying off workers for three days a week (instead of retrenching a part of the workers outright) have been stymied by political and legal obstacles.