Workers at Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd. (STLT)’s aluminum unit plan to go on an indefinite strike this month, demanding better conditions at its smelter in the state of Chhattisgarh, a trade union leader said.
“The workers are supporting a plan to stop work later this month if the authorities don’t heed our demand,” G. Sanjeeva Reddy, president of the Indian National Trade Union Congress, said today in a phone interview. The union says 90 percent of about 2,000 permanent workers at unit Bharat Aluminium Co. are its members.
Bharat Aluminium, in which Sterlite bought a 51 percent stake from the Indian government in 2001, operates a 345,000- metric-ton smelter and two bauxite mines at Korba in the eastern state. Workers at Balco, as the unit is known, in 2004 had gone on strike in protest against the government’s plan to sell its remaining 49 percent stake, the Times of India reported on July 23 that year.
Production was normal after the union’s call for a strike yesterday failed, Balco spokesman Arun Bhatt said today in a statement.
Shares of Mumbai-based Sterlite fell as much as 3.2 percent to 95.75 rupees and traded at 96.85 rupees as of 2:08 p.m. in Mumbai. The shares have risen 8 percent this year, compared with a 6 percent gain in the key Sensitive Index.
Billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Group, which owns Sterlite, offered 170 billion rupees ($3.2 billion) to buy the government’s remaining stakes in Hindustan Zinc Ltd. (HZ) and Balco, Vishwapati Trivedi, secretary at the ministry of mines, said March 22.
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