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R.R. Donnelley, or at least its management in Chennai did not like the idea of some 20 representatives of UNI and its affiliate All India Newspaper Employees Federation AINEF, visiting its plant in Chennai, India. When requested the prior to the visit they had intimated that while an AINEF delegation would not cause them any difficulty they did not want outsiders from foreign organisations ( that is Chris Ng UNI APRO Regional Secretary and Philip Bowyer UNI Deputy General Secretary) to be allowed in the plant.



Madan Talwar, from AINEF.





So when the delegation arrived on 7 March to coincide with the changing of the afternoon shift it was not really surprising that we were not let in. A bit more surprising was the fact that the security guards got very worked up about the group taking photos of the plant. Eventually the HR Director came out to talk to the delegation. When the delegation spoke by phone to his boss, the General Manager Mr. Vikram Reddy, he insisted that the delegation had come to organise a union and would not agree to let us into the plant. As delegation leader Madan Talwar (AINEF Treasurer) told him if we had come to organise a union we would be there handing out leaflets, making speeches, lobbying the workers , putting up posters and so on. But he would not move.



It was in marked contrast to the reception a UNI delegation was given last year when we had a conducted tour of the Donnelley plant in Shanghai China and held long discussions with the management.



Watching the shifts change gave a glimpse of a very controlled workforce in Chennai. The workers are almost all very young, 25 years or even less. They all have the same blue shirt type uniforms. Many of thee 300 workers are contract workers and can be distinguished by their slightly lighter blue uniforms. They are all bussed in and out of the plant in the white Donnelley busses shown in the photos. A big part of the work at the plant is printing for Nokia,the Finnish company, which has of course signed up to the labour principles of the U.N. Global Compact.





Christopher Ng, UNI APRO Regional Secretary, was not allowed to visit the plant



For more information, adriana.rosenzvaig@uniglobalunion.org