The recent factory workers’ strike at MRF’s Tiruvottiyur plant in Chennai may not have significantly impacted the company’s production, MRF vice chairman Arun Mammen has claimed.

“The Tiruvottiyur plant is one of our oldest and is also a relatively smaller plant,” said Mammen, “Given these circumstances, production at the plant has not been significantly impacted.” Mammen, however, did not quantify the drop in production.

For over two weeks in February, only 66 of over a thousand workers at MRF’s Tiruvottiyur plant turned up to work. This was in the aftermath of the company’s labour union calling for a strike over a demand for better wages, and removal of closed-circuit television cameras in the vicinity of the factory floor.

The strike was subsequently called off on February 25, after MRF agreed to meet the workers’ wage demands, the company said in a regulatory filing. The last wage-revision for the plant in question took place a decade earlier, in 2009.

Mammen confirmed that while employees’ wage demands had been met, the plant’s CCTV cameras continue to remain installed, with no changes. “Presence of CCTV cameras is a requisite under existing laws, and there was no scope of having them removed,” he said.

Earlier, workers on strike had demanded that CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the production floor be removed, on account of privacy concerns. The union said it was not averse of CCTV cameras at the plant’s entrance and scrap yard.

MRF is currently manufacturing tyres for the Indian Air Force’s Sukhoi and MIG-29 squadron. The company has reportedly evinced interest to supply tyres for the Hawk Trainer, Jaguar and Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, as well.