Maruti scouts for new workers after latest hiccup at Manesar

Maruti Suzuki India restarted some highly-automated sections of its Manesar plant in Haryana on Tuesday afternoon after a 30-hour shutdown sparked by the refusal of most workers to sign a "good conduct bond" that will prevent them from forming a union.

The Manesar plant produces 1,200 cars a day, mostly diesel versions of the popular Swift, SX4 and A-Star, and full production was yet to resume.

Most of the permanent workers, or technicians as Maruti calls them, had refused to sign the bonds on Monday and were not allowed to enter. However, the company said, by Tuesday evening 36 technicians had signed the bond. The plant has 2500-odd technicians, of which nearly 60 per cent are taken from contractors.

The company said its managers and engineers have been scouting for new hands and have identified over 200 experienced and trained people, who are likely to join work within a few days, on contracts.

Car sales slowest in two years

Tuesday's work was handled mostly by the 290-odd supervisors and a handful of diploma engineers brought in from the main plant at Gurgaon, 30km away.

The company said it would think of putting all the willing workers into one shift instead of spreading them out over the usual two shifts.

In June this year, the plant had shut down for 13 days when workers on Maruti's payroll as well as those taken by it from labour contractors had gone on a tool-down strike to demand their own union, as distinct from the sole recognised union, the Maruti Kamgar Union, based at Gurgaon.

The June shutdown had cost the company Rs 500 crore.

The factory had reopened after Maruti took back those it had dismissed.  According to the workers, the company had also said it will look into the issue of union formation after the elections at the Maruti Kamgar Union, in July. The company denies this.

While the payroll workers at the Manesar plant can vote in the Maruti Kamgar Union elections, they have boycotted it since 2004, when the plant began functioning. This July was no different.

Since Monday, Maruti has dismissed five technicians, suspended 26 and discontinued the services of 18 technical trainees at the Manesar plant.

PERSPECTIVE: Behind falling car sales

The company had said workers have been "indulging in deliberate attempts in reducing output between June and now and also in compromising customer interests" by causing quality problem in cars produced. The workers who have been dismissed or suspended have been charged with "internal sabotage".

Rishi Pal Singh, a secretary of Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, the unrecognised union at Manesar, who was suspended last week, says: "The employees have not done anything that harms the company. The company is doing it with the help of some employees who are with the management."

The company had earlier given a three-day paid holiday from Monday to the contractors' workers.

"The company has given leave to contract labourers so that their support to our agitation can be pre-empted," Singh said. He says the Maruti Kamgar Union is a "puppet" of the management.

General Motors India had faced a similar problem of union rivalry followed by a strike at its plant in Gujarat.  It suspended all the workers who had struck work, and with the support of the state government, recruited whole batches of technicians fresh out of Industrial Training Institutes.

P Balendran, Vice President (Corporate Affairs) of GM India, says it had taken some effort and time before the production became normal, as they all needed to be trained.

He says the government needs to amend the labour and factory laws. "It was an inter-union rivalry in GM India and it appears to be the case in Maruti as well. You can't take permanent workers on huge numbers as the industry is going through a slowdown. We want to employ more contract workers and for that the laws need to be amended," Balendran says.

Ancillaries that feed Maruti are worried by the troubles at Manesar. "There has been a slowdown in terms of uptake of inventories by Maruti over the past few weeks," says Surinder Kapur, chairman and managing director of Sona Koyo Steering Systems, which has been with Maruti from the start.

"With the new launches in September, the Manesar plant will take 50 per cent of our total supplies to Maruti. So if the situation persists, it is going to affect us," Kapur says. At present, Manesar absorbs only 16 per cent of Sona Koyo's supplies to Maruti.

Maruti is against allowing a separate union at Maruti on two counts. First, it fears the entry of outside leaders with political interests. Second, it does not want a separate union for each plant.

The Manesar workers are adamant. Shiv Kumar, general secretary of the unrecognised union at Manesar, had told BT in June that their people are outnumbered in the elections at the main union.

The unrecognised union also claims that the issues at the two plants are different and a single union will not be able to address them. Kumar said the Maruti Kamgar Union had not been able to address the problems of the Manesar workers.