Operations came to a stand still on Thurday at Devki Steel Plant Limited in Athi River after workers went on streets over inefficiency in new payment system.
The over 900 employees of the company boycotted work and instead blocked Nairobi - Athi River Road at the main company's entrance paralysing transport on the road for close to an hour.
It took police intervention to calm the angry workers.
The workers said, Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), machines which the company had just installed were inefficient.
"We do not want the newly introduced payment system because it is inefficient, we cannot get our payments in full," said a worker who sought anonymity for fear of victimisation.
They said they were unable to get both their pay slips and pay rolls since the time the systems were installed.
The new system were installed in December last year.
"We are not happy with the system at all because workers do not even know how much money they work for in a day since we are never issued with both pay slips and pay rolls," said another employee.
It took the company's management close to five hours to calm and convince the workers that the discrepancies would be rectified soon.
DEVKI Human Resource Manager, James Kariuki, who talked to the press at his office shortly after containing the situation admitted the industrial unrest was as a result of discrepancies in the workers' salaries.
Kariuki said the company had installed ERP machines which had not been completely streamlined hence the inefficiency.
He revealed the company had adopted the machines to ensure efficiency in management on payroll, purchases, sales and production as a process of implementation part of the management.
"It is normal for workers to complain if they fail to receive payments which they expected in their bank accounts," said Kariuki.
The HR said they had to put up the changes whether the workers liked it or not, arguing it is part of the company's strategic management.
Kariuki said that though the company experienced lots of losses due to 24 hours production failure, the workers who get paid twice in a month, mid and end would receive all their pending payments same day to resume work on Friday.
The workers argued that the company's management ought to had used both the old and new payment systems to avoid the discrepancies.