The management of Allied Nippon, the Indo-Japanese auto parts company where a personnel manager was beaten to death by workers at the factory here on Saturday, today issued notices to 30 regular workers to explain why they should not be dismissed from service.
This is the first action from the company, whose factory resumed work with contracted labour today, after the violent clash which led to the death of the assistant general manager, human resources, Yoginder Chaudhury. Two of his colleagues were severely injured. The police have arrested nine workers and are looking for others.
Mahender Singh Chaudhury, the vice-president, HR, who was also severely assaulted, had come to work with a bandaged head and an injured right eye: “I will not quit this job. I will work even if I am beaten again.”
He was hired just two months earlier. The management felt the union leaders were getting out of hand. Half a dozen managers were dismissed and replaced by Chaudhury’s team because they were not able to manage the workers, who were wont to take it easy, says Chaudhury. His room is located on the way from the gates of the factory to the workshops. “This is the hazard of our job. If we don’t get results, we lose our jobs. And, if we make workers do their job, we get attacked by them. But I am not going to run away,” he says.
“I was hiding in a room upstairs after I found them chasing the president,” he recalls. The HR president, N C Kaushik, was in his room upstairs and Chaudhury had gone to his room. Just minutes ago, Yoginder Chaudhury and R K Singh had left his room for their offices. He had gone upstairs. All was well then, he says.
But in the factory, all was not well. Some workers had an altercation with the technical supervisor, according to Chaudhury. Soon, the supervisor was seen running towards the gate. Chaudhury and Singh also started running. And all three got beaten, with Yoginder Chaudhury getting killed on the road outside, goes the version given by Mahender Chaudhury.
He says there was no provocation, something the union leaders contest. He says this group of violent workers then proceeded towards the cabin of the president, who had been there for a decade and beat him. And, the workers were soon in the third floor room, where Mahender Chaudhury was hiding under a table. They beat him with the chairs that lay there.
All this happened in spite of the presence of a union and a committee of workers which has been negotiating with management and the state labour department. The demand was mainly to take back five contract workers who were recently dismissed. The District Magistrate of Ghaziabad today had talks with leaders of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (Citu), to whom the factory workers union is affiliated. Delhi Citu president Mohan Lal said the management had gone back on the settlement arrived by the previous management with the workers and had taken back many facilities earlier offered to them. “They wanted to break the union,” he said.
