Bajaj Auto’s Waluj facility in Aurangabad is its new lifeline as the workers’ strike at Chakan (near Pune) inches towards Day Ten.
This option would have been inconceivable less than a decade ago, when Chakan was the new kid on the block. Waluj, in contrast, was not only a lot older but had serious legacy issues in the form of a seven-month-long labour problem in the late 1980s.
It was clearly not on Bajaj Auto’s list of favourite facilities but has come a long way since then.
“Waluj has seen two decades of upheaval but the people there have learnt their lessons the hard way. Today, it is one of our best plants,” says Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director.
Waluj hardly had a skilled workforce when it started operations in the early 1980s and the unit had its fair share of volatile phases. Yet, it is this lot of more experienced employees that rejected the call for a strike by the same union that is operating at Chakan.
Waluj is now doubling for Chakan and may even assume a greater role if the strike continues indefinitely. Neither did the striking union at Chakan make any headway with the workforce at Pantnagar, the company’s youngest plant. Nearly 90 per cent of the 850-odd employees here are diploma/graduate engineers who work in an automobile zone that includes other automakers, such as Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra.
Ironically, Pantnagar now is what Chakan used to be when it began operations 16 years ago with a young and energetic workforce. They were raring to go compared to their counterparts at Waluj then but now find their roles reversed vis-à-vis the brisker lot at Pantnagar.
“Chakan is in between these two plants and was perhaps due to fall and go the Waluj way. It does not have the experience of Waluj or the positive mindset of Pantnagar, where workers see themselves as engineers,” reasons Bajaj.
Yet, it is not as if the ongoing strife will prompt the company to prune Chakan’s role as the laboratory powerhouse for its bikes. The Akurdi plant is home to R&D and engineering while Chakan is located nearby. This proximity is essential for work to continue uninterrupted. “Chakan has the capabilities and is home to all the advanced work. It is the base for intellectual activities with its bright people,” says Bajaj.
For someone who swears by homeopathy and applies its principle of ‘inside out’ to work, Bajaj compares the ongoing crisis to the body’s immune system. “Sometimes, however strong you are, the disease from outside can get so overwhelming that it acquires the nature of an epidemic. This is when the immune system fails,” says Bajaj.