The 13-day strike at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd’s Manesar plant, which ended last Friday, may well be the beginning of a new phase in labour relations for India’s largest car maker and for big industry in general. It has also brought into focus the issue of the rights of contract labour. The management’s initial refusal to grant the workers’ demand for a new union, on the grounds that it was opposed to the idea of two unions for the same company as also to the proposal that the new union would have one-third representation from an outside trade union with political affiliation, was unsustainable. The situation aggravated when the Maruti Suzuki management dismissed 11 employees on disciplinary grounds and threatened to enforce an eight-day wage cut for every day of production loss caused by the strike. After 13 days of strike, an estimated production loss of Rs 420 crore and several rounds of negotiations including a referral of the matter to the Haryana chief minister, the management appears to have conceded almost all the major points the striking workers had raised.
The workers now maintain that they will form a new union, subject to its registration by the state government. Moreover, the workers, not the management, will decide whether they should allow representation by a trade union affiliated to a political party. The company will take back the dismissed employees, but will subject them to disciplinary action. Instead of eight days of pay cut for every day’s production loss, the management has now reportedly agreed to cut only three days’ wages. Yes, the management says it has got the Haryana chief minister’s assurance that it will not allow the formation of a new union, but the workers point out that this is their right and they are prepared to move the court if the state government refuses them permission. Given the manner in which the Maruti Suzuki management handled the agitation, it appears the workers have a good reason to celebrate and the management must do some introspection.
The question that arises is whether Maruti Suzuki ignored the real reasons why a trade union like the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), a trade union affiliated to the Communist Party of India, has managed to make inroads into an area where it had an insignificant presence a decade ago. Even as the automobile industry expanded in Gurgaon and Manesar, making it the country’s largest auto hub, the tendency to hire more contract workers was also on the rise, raising their share to almost 60 per cent of the total auto industry workforce in the area. AITUC, which had moved away from its base in the east, where industry was already on the decline, found in the prosperous auto belt a good cause that it could champion. Even Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant has about 700 contract workers (28 per cent of the total), many of whom get absorbed later, but the salary differential with regular employees is an issue that rankles most of them. If the auto industry in Haryana has to find a durable solution to its labour troubles, it must resolve the issue of contract workers. The solution does not lie in ignoring it or shifting to new plants in Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, as some of them are planning, since the contract labour issue is not going to go away.
