The strike at Maruti fizzles out a third time as labour leaders take their money and flee
The strike at Maruti fizzles out a third time as labour leaders take their money and flee.
Workers protest outside the Manesar plant.
At 28, Pradeep Fogat, from Bhiwani in Haryana, is already a Maruti Suzuki veteran. He started at its Gurgaon plant eight years ago as an apprentice and graduated to a staffer on the rolls of a contractor. When the company opened a new plant in neighbouring Manesar in 2006, Fogat moved there as a trainee and joined it three years later as an employee. Suspended in July with 29 others as the management came down hard on agitating workers, he has now chosen to leave the company. "All the 30 sus-pended employees have resigned," says a spokes-person for the company, who requested not to be named.
With this, Fogat and his mates' careers with Maruti are not the only things petering out. The strike, into its third iteration this year, has lost steam. True, it shook up the country's automotive sector, made labour leader Sonu Gujjar's face a symbol of workers' angst, and turned Maruti's seven-and-a-half-minute samosa-toilet breaks into a subject of national debate. But now the strike is reduced to little more than a hard-nosed bargain as the management remains firm in its refusal to recognise any union other than the Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union, with which it has been working for years, and the striking workers look to make the most of a bad situation.
Hotel Chaupal in Gurgaon, a three-storey red sandstone and glass building on a dusty old road, where the inquiry into the suspensions was conducted in the last week of October, had rarely seen such custom. Six men from Group 4 Securitas and as many uniformed guards from Maruti held vigil, starting with a reconnaissance at 8.30 in the morning. The suspended workers spoke in hushed tones and would not share their mobile numbers, saying these would soon change. Perhaps they had already resigned themselves to their fate.
Not that they had many options. Fogat, for instance, is a married man with a brother in college and needs to repay loans taken to marry off his sisters. He knows that the employees dismissed during a strike 11 years ago at Maruti's Gurgaon factory are still fighting their case in the courts. Getting the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union recognised, a demand which was at the heart of the agitation, can wait; meals and loans come first. "We will be blacklisted across the industrial belt as troublemakers," says a suspended worker who did not want to be named. Little surprise then that the suspended workers opted for a final settlement, which is believed to be worth Rs 40 lakh for the two front line leaders, Gujjar and Shiv Kumar, and left the company.
Adds Rishi Pal, 27, a member of the unrecog-nised union's working committee: "The biggest weakness was us." Ram Kumar, a dismissed em-ployee from the 2000 Gurgaon strike, still fighting his case in court, is angry. "They sold out. Today's boys don't have the willpower to fight," he says. To Anil Kumar, Gurgaon district head of All India Trade Union Congress, an affiliate of the Communist Party of India, this is the end of the movement. "It will be very difficult for a new leadership to emerge," he says.
Another of the suspended workers, also named Rishi Pal, says the leaders started losing support of the workers when the strike began a third time. "No one in Gurgaon supported us. In the fight to gain more influence among the workers of the belt, the two major trade unions fought among themselves," he says. The company's older plant in Gurgaon has older employees, who remained loyal to the management.
As things stand, the Maruti management seems to have had its way. The company spokes-person says the workers never brought the breaks into the negotiations. On an eight-hour shift, they get a 30-minute break for lunch and two seven-and-a-half-minute breaks for tea and snacks, and to visit the bathroom. This appeared to become a flashpoint midway through the strike, but died down later. According to the spokesperson, the practice is the same at Suzuki's plants in Japan. It is also a practice that has worked smoothly for 28 years at the Gurgaon plant, and for the last five in Manesar.
Still, the agitation is not entirely without impact. Earlier, for taking a day off, a worker would lose 25 per cent his monthly incentive pay for full attendance. So four days of illness a month would wipe out the entire incentive, which ranged from Rs 2,500 to Rs 8,800. He will now lose only 10 per cent.
Fogat, the two Rishi Pals and their 27 mates need not rack their brains over these calculations.
The new union is still not recognised
Hotel Chaupal in Gurgaon, a three-storey red sandstone and glass building on a dusty old road, where the inquiry into the suspensions was conducted in the last week of October, had rarely seen such custom. Six men from Group 4 Securitas and as many uniformed guards from Maruti held vigil, starting with a reconnaissance at 8.30 in the morning. The suspended workers spoke in hushed tones and would not share their mobile numbers, saying these would soon change. Perhaps they had already resigned themselves to their fate.
Not that they had many options. Fogat, for instance, is a married man with a brother in college and needs to repay loans taken to marry off his sisters. He knows that the employees dismissed during a strike 11 years ago at Maruti's Gurgaon factory are still fighting their case in the courts. Getting the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union recognised, a demand which was at the heart of the agitation, can wait; meals and loans come first. "We will be blacklisted across the industrial belt as troublemakers," says a suspended worker who did not want to be named. Little surprise then that the suspended workers opted for a final settlement, which is believed to be worth Rs 40 lakh for the two front line leaders, Gujjar and Shiv Kumar, and left the company.
Adds Rishi Pal, 27, a member of the unrecog-nised union's working committee: "The biggest weakness was us." Ram Kumar, a dismissed em-ployee from the 2000 Gurgaon strike, still fighting his case in court, is angry. "They sold out. Today's boys don't have the willpower to fight," he says. To Anil Kumar, Gurgaon district head of All India Trade Union Congress, an affiliate of the Communist Party of India, this is the end of the movement. "It will be very difficult for a new leadership to emerge," he says.
Another of the suspended workers, also named Rishi Pal, says the leaders started losing support of the workers when the strike began a third time. "No one in Gurgaon supported us. In the fight to gain more influence among the workers of the belt, the two major trade unions fought among themselves," he says. The company's older plant in Gurgaon has older employees, who remained loyal to the management.
Inquiry venue: Outside Hotel Chaupal in Gurgaon
Still, the agitation is not entirely without impact. Earlier, for taking a day off, a worker would lose 25 per cent his monthly incentive pay for full attendance. So four days of illness a month would wipe out the entire incentive, which ranged from Rs 2,500 to Rs 8,800. He will now lose only 10 per cent.
Fogat, the two Rishi Pals and their 27 mates need not rack their brains over these calculations.
