The employees carried placards to voice their dissatisfaction. Among others, the wordings were, 'We demand justice', 'Discriminatory VSS', 'BAT wins the World's Worst Employer award' and 'BAT = Penipu'.

Karsin Diran, 51 a BAT technician, said took part in the protest because he was unhappy with the amount that was offered in his VSS. He said that since BAT introduced the new scheme, he was getting RM90,000 less than what he was supposed to as he had worked with BAT for the last 26 years.

Another picketer, who just wanted to be known as Krishna, 42, and who works in BAT's administration section, questioned the offer of VSS by BAT as it seemed to be targeted only at union workers.

BAT put into a bad light

Meanwhile, Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) secretary general G Rajasekaran said BAT wanted to specifically retrench certain workers.

“The company (BAT) are choosing to specifically retrench the union workers,” he said in a statement.

In October 2007, BAT barred employees of two wholly-owned subsidiaries - Tobacco Importers and Manufacturers Sdn Bhd and Commercial Marketing and Distributors Sdn Bhd - from BAT Union membership.

In November last year, BAT was put into a bad light when a survey by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) alleged that (BAT) impaired its union through dismissals and by reclassifying union members as 'management personnel' while not changing job specifications.

These and other moves - including the outsourcing of its technical service department and the firing of its unionised personnel - has reduced the membership of BAT's workers' union to little more than two dozen people.