Textile mills increase wages to avoid Arvind like strike

An impact of workers' strike at Arvind Naroda plant is being

taken seriously by other textile mills. Post-strike at Arvind plant, a few textile mills have hiked wages to pre-empt any untoward incident at their plants. Among them are Diamond Mills, a textile processing house and Nandan Exim, the denim arm of Chiripal Group. While the former has hiked salaries in the range of Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 per month, the latter is learnt to have offered a pay hike of about Rs 2,000-4,000 per month. Workers at Arvind’s Naroda plant get an average salary of Rs 5,000-7,000 per month.

Meanwhile to battle the labour issues and on-going workers’ strike, Arvind is looking at Bangladesh to salvage the production loss. The Ahmedabad-based company is now mulling renting a denim mill for five years in Bangladesh to annually manufacture 12 million metres fabric.

Demanding higher wages, around 3,500 workers at Arvind’s Naroda plant are on a strike for over 10 days. Negotiations between the company, labour department officials and union leaders met a dead lock as workers refused to join work before their demand for 40 per cent hike is accepted. The Naroda plant primarily makes denim fabrics and has an annual capacity of 84 million metres.