The day the family cremated Lalit Kumar Choudhary, the CEO of the Greater Noida-based firm who was lynched by workers yesterday, while industry groups reacted with a chorus of outrage, Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes said his murder should serve as a “warning” to corporates.

Blaming what he called hire-and-fire policies of companies for “simmering discontent” among workers, Fernandes asked “managements to deal with them with compassion”.

“People are employed on contract basis. There is disparity in wages of permanent workers and contract workers. There is simmering discontent among workers and they should not be driven to such an extent as happened in Greater Noida...Managements have to see this as a warning and they should also respond adequately,” Fernandes said.

He said that companies tend to hire people on contracts even when they are in a position to make permanent appointments, leading to fewer jobs in the organised sector. “Workers react violently when they lose their jobs,” the Minister said, adding, “At the same time, managements have their problems also. But what I am saying is that the whole issue should be viewed with compassion. I appeal to companies to treat workers’ problems with compassion.”

Fernandes has called for a review of the industrial disputes resolution system, so that emphasis is put on bipartite consultations, building of trust through information sharing, and the promotion of voluntary arbitration over adjudication.

Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) CEO Pankaj Agarwal said the death of Graziano Transmissioni CEO Choudhary was “not merely a law and order problem”. And that the incident “is concerned with the whole industrial environment of the state. We are seriously looking into why this kind of situation cropped up, besides reviewing policies to ensure that such incidents are not repeated.” He added that it was “unfortunate that an international company CEO had to sacrifice his life to awaken the government to introspect (on) the industrial situation”.

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