Maruti Suzuki India on Thursday said it will hire about 500 workers in this fiscal for the second unit at Manesar facility that was operationalised last year.

Meanwhile, the company has started wage negotiations for a three-year period with its workers at the Gurgaon facility, while the same for the Manesar plant employees is likely to start within next 2—3 weeks.

“We need more workers at Manesar for the Plant B. We will hire about 500 people for this by the end of this fiscal,” said Mr S Y Siddiqui, Managing Executive Officer (Administration), Maruti Suzuki India (MSI).

Besides the first unit, Maruti had announced to invest over Rs 3,625 crore to set up two new plants with 2.5 lakh annual capacities each at the Manesar facility. While the second unit was opened last year, the third one is scheduled to be operational in 2012-13.

Mr Siddiqui said the company will hire people of different verticals like technicians, diploma engineer trainees and laterals for the second unit.

Talking about wage negotiations, he said: “We have started negotiations with the Gurgaon plant’s workers. We are hopeful of reaching an agreement by the end of May and it will be implemented with retrospective effect from April this year.”

The company will also start negotiations for its Manesar employees within next two weeks, he added.