A lull before the storm at Maruti plant?

On a warm Monday afternoon as the DNA team stood outside ‘Gate Two’ of Maruti Suzuki’s main factory, assembly line workers, who protested for three months against the management’s alleged resistance to a new trade union, walked out quietly at the end of their shift.

“We neither want to talk about the past, nor about the future,” a worker fiddling with his mobile told us, when asked if he was happy that an application to register the Maruti Suzuki workers union was finally sent to the Haryana Labour Commission on November 4. Like his co-workers, he refused to be identified.

Their movement, another worker confirms, has now gone “underground.” Till the process of registering their union is completed by the Registrar of Trade Unions in Gurgaon (expected to take six weeks), workers prefer to keep it quiet.

Lessons, he said, had been learnt after “fallen comrades “ Sonu Gujjar and Shiv Kumar — the two labour leaders who “compromised” along with 28 others and exited the company following generous settlements.

Fearing they might be called “corporate vigilantes”, most workers refused to speak near the factory premises. Instead they preferred a chat at Manesar village, a few kilometres away. The village — a cluster of narrow lanes and one-room houses — is surrounded by open heaps of garbage. A group of workers who said they were from the main factory’s assembly line spoke to us, again, on condition of anonymity.

“Shoshan (exploitation),” says a worker when asked about the reason behind the genesis of the movement earlier this year. He said they were “expected to drink tea and eat snacks in seven and half minutes.” The lunch break for “half an hour includes changing uniforms, standing in long queues, eating, re-changing clothes and reporting back to duty,” another worker told DNA.

Another seven and half minutes are given to workers in the evening for tea in a typical eight-hour shift.

“Each permanent worker is paid Rs10,500 per month as net salary with another Rs7,000 additional payment per head linked to company profit, status of a worker’s attendance and his behaviour.”

The workers said the company’s “standing orders for workmen” were “strict.” But what is the use of a new trade union when the Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union exists since 2000? “You can’t call that a workers’ union. It was formed by nominees of the management and held only one election this July,” alleges another worker.

The CPI (M)’s Dipankar Mukherjee, who is also the secretary, Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), criticised the Maruti Suzuki management for hauling up workers for “major misconduct” if they spent a little extra time in the toilets.

Which is why, the worker’s three-month stir has evoked sympathy.

“The labour-militancy at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar unit was justified as the legal system has collapsed,” says Colin Gonsalves, senior Supreme Court advocate.

Bajnath Rai, president of BJP-aligned Bharitiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), agrees, “This is about the fundamental right of workers. Maruti’s management has been trying to do an unconstitutional thing by not following the Trade Union Act of 1926.”

When contacted, Puneet Dhawan, spokesperson, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd told DNA on Tuesday that, “all worker issues have been addressed in the tripartite agreement of October 21, between workers’ representatives, the Haryana government and the management.” According to Dhawan all the worker’s outstanding

issues have been resolved for good.
To most observers, the labour unrest at India’s largest car-maker is over.

Following top-line and production losses of Rs2,500 crore and 85,000 cars respectively, the management is eager to move on.
But for the workers, the success or failure of their movement depends on whether their union is registered in a few weeks. Till then the winter of discontent will remain underground.