Tisco to lay off 20,000 to skip coal wage pact

From The Financial Express, National Edition, January 24, 2004

The Tata Iron & Steel Company (Tisco) plans to bring down its workforce from 40,000 to around 20,000 in the next five years.

Also, the company is soon going to sign an agreement with its colliery union which would keep the company outside the ambit of National Coal Wage Award (NCWA).

“Tata Steel used to be an 80,000-employee company (in the early 1990s) producing 2 million tonne of steel; at present, we are 40,000, producing 5 million tonne and in five years we will be going 7.5 million tonne with 20,000 (employees),” said Niroop Mahanty, vice-president (HR), Tisco, on Saturday. He was delivering the keynote address here at the 5th National Industrial Relations Conference organized by the XLRI’s Forum for Industrial Relations (FIREX). “My productivity has gone up eight times,” he said. Answering how it happened, Mr Mahanty said, “We made them (the union) partners (in our plans)”.

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