By Praveen Paramasivam
CHENNAI (Reuters) – State officials will visit a Samsung factory in Tamil Nadu to end a dispute between the electronics maker and 500 workers holding a sit-in protest over the suspension of three employees, a state minister told Reuters on Thursday.
In the second significant labour dispute in less than six months at the factory in Sriperumbudur near Chennai, workers have been protesting for nine days.
“The government will take necessary action to resolve the issue… Normalcy at the Samsung plant is expected to be restored within two-to-three days,” C.V. Ganesan, state labour minister, said.
Samsung said in a statement to Reuters that most of its workers continue to ensure that production remains uninterrupted, calling the protest an illegal strike.
“At Samsung, we are compliant with all applicable laws,” it added.
The union backing the protest has said the workers involved in the sit-in will only return to work if Samsung agrees to reinstate the three suspended workers.
Ganesan said the government was also looking into a complaint, raised by the union that the electronics manufacturer is using contract workers.
Reuters reported last week that Samsung had hired contract workers, ensuring the protest has had no impact on production so far.
The factory, which employs roughly 1,800 people, makes refrigerators, televisions and washing machines and accounted for a fifth of the South Korean electronics manufacturer’s $12 billion Indian sales in 2022-23.
Last year, hundreds of workers went on a five-week strike at the plant to demand higher wages and union recognition. The strike ended in October after Samsung agreed to address the workers’ demands.
(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai; editing by Barbara Lewis and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
