Here’s how severely the economic slowdown has bitten industrial areas: one company has already sought closure and 12 companies between them have sought to lay off 2,300 workers in Pune region.

M Forge, a company that employs 240 workers in Chinchwad, applied to the Labour Commissioner for closure, citing no business as the reason for not continuing operations. It became the first manifest victim of economic slowdown in Pune region. The forging unit filed the application in February and the case is being deliberated upon at the office of labour commissionerate in Mumbai.

“They have said that there is no work because of the slowdown. Their application is under consideration in the Mumbai office,” said deputy labour commissioner D P Pagar. A decision should be forthcoming by this month-end, Pagar said.

If this was a lone case, applications for layoffs have been pouring in since October 2008. Till now, 12 companies in Pune region, citing the economic slowdown, have approached the district labour commissionerate seeking permission for laying off (and retrenching in one case) employees. “The total number of workers lined up for layoffs was 2,300, we have granted permission for 1,016 workers,” said Pagar.

Potain India, a crane manufacturing company that employs over 300 workers, filed an application in February to lay off 240. “Since December, the numbers of orders have fallen drastically. If we manufactured 16 cranes per month earlier, now we are down to one or two,” said Dhairyasheel Pawar, HR manager, Potain India.

“Orders have picked up to an extent in March, but we still have excess employees on the company payrolls. Ideally, we would like to retrench workers, but at present we have only applied for a layoff,” Pawar said.

A retrenchment would remove workers from the pay rolls of the company; a layoff on the other hand would ensure workers get 50 per cent of the Basic+ Dearness Allowance component of their salary during the lay-off period. According to Pagar, permission for layoffs was granted after consultations with the unions.

But not all requests for retrenchment/layoffs get cleared. The labour commissionerate rejected a request for retrenchment of 22 workers from Trinity Engineers Pvt Ltd, an automobile forging unit in Bhosari because it did not find the case genuine. It also received two separate applications for lay-off from the same company for its units in Bhosari and Shikrapur.