Lockout Halts Toyota Car Production In India

BANGALORE: Car production halted at Japanese auto major Toyota's twin plants near here, a day after the management declared a lockout over a failed wage deal with its employees' union.

"We have stopped production in both plants as a precautionary measure to ensure safety of machinery, employees and management personnel," Toyota Kirloskar Motor Ltd vice chairman Shekar Viswanathan told reporters here late Monday.

The firm's Indian joint venture's plants are located at Bidadi, about 30 km from Bangalore. The plants have a capacity to roll out about 700 cars a day and 310,000 units annually.

"We have lost production of about 2,000 vehicles during the last 25 days due to go-slow tactics by a section of workers in both the factories," Viswanathan said, but did not quantify the loss in terms of revenue.

The union, however, termed the lockout illegal and said it was suddenly declared without the mandatory 14-day notice to employees and intimation to the state labour office.

"Lockout is illegal as management did not give the 14-day prior notice to us or informed the labour office in advance," TKM Employees' Union president Prasanna Kumar told IANS earlier in the day.

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