GurgaonWorkersNews – Newsletter 47 (February 2012)

Gurgaon in the industrial belt of Delhi is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-waged classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young proletarianised post-graduates lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers up-rooted by the rural crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh, China or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, new industrial zones turn soil into over-capacities. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk

In the February 2012 issue you can read

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Everything but Accidental – Fatal Accident at Machino Plastics Ltd. and a Report by an Omega Construction Equipment Worker -
In January 2012, a roof in the factory of Machino Plastics in Manesar collapsed under “heavy machinery and raw material set-up” – two workers were killed on the spot and several others seriously injured. Last summer, a work accident in the Faridabad plant of Omega Construction Equipment nearly killed Dinesh Kumar. Although he worked for the company since 25 years as a permanent employee and despite the fact that – unlike the majority of workers in Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon – he had an ESI medical insurance card, the post-accident treatment by both company and medical system turned out to be a nightmare.

*** The Guns of Manesar and the Return of Patriarchal Corporatism: Wage Revison at Maruti Suzuki and Reports from Mars Associates and Motherson Sumi Workers -
We include a short note on the upcoming pay revision in the Maruti Suzuki plant in Manesar, which has turned into a stage-show for management propaganda. According to the head of Maruti Suzuki’s human resource department, the pay revision “will help stabilize the situation not only at Maruti, but the entire industrial belt in Haryana”. He continues wisely: “Twenty years back, the profile of workers was different. Now, almost 70 per cent of our workforce is in the age group of 24-26 years. These young guns always look for improvements.” Following the note on the wage revision are two reports of ‘young guns’ employed in Maruti’s supply-chain, at Mars Associates Ltd. and Motherson Sumi Systems.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Two Decades of Unrest at Clutch Auto in Faridabad
Clutch Auto was one of the first industrial companies in Faridabad. The first factory was opened in 1971, in the mid-1980s the company shifted to a new plant at Mathura Road. Now Clutch Auto is about to open a factory in Rewari, near Manesar, which may result in down-sizing or closure of the Faridabad plant. At around 2 million per year the company is India’s largest clutch manufacturer; producing for the automobile industry, agricultural machines and army tanks. In June 2011 about 350 permanent workers at Clutch Auto went on a 11-days strike. At the time the dispute at Maruti Suzuki in Manesar, about 50 km from Faridabad, was in full swing. The strike officially concerned wages and a ‘wage agreement’, but the relocation of the factory was looming in the background. We include a workers’ report published in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar. We also translated an older article relating the story of a strike at Clutch Auto in 1992, which broke out after 250 casual workers were sacked from the plant.

*** Green/Nano-Technology, the Long Shadow of the 20th/US-century and the Local Regime: A workers’ Report from Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd. -
Worker’s report on a dispute at Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd., Gurgaon, summer 2011. Workers recently formed a trade union, which raised the demand for higher wages and permanent contracts for the casual workers. In response Usha management sacked all casual workers – followed by police repression and entanglement in the net of the labour law. The company Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd. is an interesting example of the close connection between so-called ‘green’ and ‘nano-technology’ and the large-scale industries (automobile, aerospace, military-complex). The company history also demonstrates the formation process of ‘global corporations’. Behind the formal display of joint-ventures (in Usha’s case with Honeywell, US; Siemens, Germany; Hitachi, Japan) and ‘capital and technology transfer’, we can see how these corporations grew as part of the state regimes and their ‘opening of markets’.

*** Caparo Automobile Workers in Chennai: Short and Successful Strike against Casualisation and Low Wages -
On 1st of December 2011, 500 workers in the stamping and foundry units of the automobile parts manufacturer Caparo (Sriperumbudur/Chennai plant) went on strike. After two days, management agreed to raise wages and to make 110 workers permanent. We report our rather limited information and ask friends and comrades in Chennai to supply further insights on this important struggle. The strike has to be seen as a continuation of the unrest at Maruti Suzuki or Munjal Showa in Manesar, Gurgaon – the unrest of a new generation of workers.

3) According to Plan -
News on (Local) Re-Structuring and Crisis

*** The Failing ‘Kingdom of Dreams’: The Global Crunch and the Local Crisis of Real Estate -
In the last month we could observe how two very ‘finance’ sensitive sectors slowly, but surely crunched due to lack of liquidity – the airlines and the real estate sector. These are ‘early symptoms’, hinting at the condition of the general economy. I.e. the root of the problem lying not in ‘sector specific issues’, but in the general squeeze; rising costs of credits vs. lower expectations of future profits. The credit crunch translates itself back into the ‘real world’ in form of urban deserts – in particular in Gurgaon. The three symbols of the neo-liberal boom in Gurgaon are shaken: DLF itself, the Reliance SEZ and the ‘Kingdom of Dreams’, a Bollywood entertainment mall.

*** The Middle-Class is Revolting: Devaluation and Social Angst -
The fact that the iron fix-points of society – money, commodity, state power, professional advancement etc. – slowly turn into sand-castles, leaves its impact on the mind not only of workers, but also of the middle-waged classes. Recently Gurgaon witnessed some outbreaks of ‘middle class anger’ towards the commodity-form. ‘Middle class’ people who lose more time in traffic jams on the National Highway, than the new highway would allow them to ‘win’ by speed, forcibly opened the toll gates which are meant to ‘finance’ the highway. Young ‘middle-class’ people came to see Metallica in Gurgaon – a band, which is known for their arsehole attitude towards ‘free music downloads or sharing’ on the data highway. After the announcement that the concert would be postponed, people smashed the concert venue. Two short news items on pent-up anger…

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** Suggested Reading: Contributions to the Global Overthrow
The global and historical character of the current crisis forces us to coordinate both debate and practice ‘for workers self-emancipation’ on an international scale. Check the following for your reading list.

The new Letter by Mouvement Communiste about the Euro fiscal crisis in general and its expression in Greece in particular:
Mouvement Communiste

The new issue of Insurgent Notes, reflecting on the ‘Occupy’-movement in the US:
Insurgent Notes

*** Delhi Calling: Get Involved in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel
To abolish the global work/war house will take more than informative exercise! If you live in Delhi area, please be welcomed to take part in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel – a workers’ coordination. We distribute around 9,000 copies of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on ten days each month in various industrial areas around Delhi. You can also participate in the workers’ meeting places which have been opened in various workers’ areas. If you are interested, please get in touch. For more background: Faridabad Majdoor Talmel

———————–

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Everything but Accidental – Report by an Omega Construction Equipment Worker and on fatal Accident at Machino Plastics Ltd. -

Accidents are a daily routine (not only) for workers in the Delhi industrial belts. Not only the factories are slaughterhouses, the way to work itself is murderous. Between January and December 2011 officially (!) 163 people were killed in road accidents on the short Gurgaon-stretch of the National Highway 8, most of them workers crossing the highway on foot…

Two Workers Killed at Machino Plastics, Manesar
21st of January 2012
At least two workers were killed and several injured when a temporary roof-structure collapsed at Machino Plastics Ltd., a supplier for Maruti India Ltd’s in IMT Manesar. “There was a huge machine setup which suddenly fell along with the pillars and roof,” investigation officer Surender Singh said. “The victims were rushed to hospital where two workers were declared dead on arrival. Situation of four workers is stated to be critical.” Those killed were identified as Bhagirath and Naresh Kumar. Bhagirath hails from Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad and Naresh from Rajasthan.

Omega Construction Equipment Worker
(FMS 2011)
A work accident in the Faridabad plant of Omega Construction Equipment nearly killed Dinesh Kumar. Although he worked for the company since 25 years as a permanent employee and despite the fact that – unlike the majority of workers in Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon – he had an ESI medical insurance card, the post-accident treatment by both company and medical system turned out to be a nightmare. http://www.omega.org.in/fabrication/facilities.htm

Omega Construction Equipment manufactures special machinery and heavy fabrications (hydraulic cranes, storage tanks) for the local and global large-scale industry (petrochemical, power, cement, paper, sugar, textile, steel industries). Me, Dinesh Kumar, worked at this factory (Plot 262 M, Sector 24, Faridabad) for 25 years as a permanent employee. On 15th of September 2009 I had an accident at an hydraulic press, which cut my complete face. One jaw bone was cut, I lost all teeth and my nose was cut. I spent one month in the Escorts Fortis Hospital, then 15 days in the Metro Hospital, then 10 days at the ESI Hospital – I was unconscious for the whole time, I then opened my eyes. The mouth area was stitched up, I was fed through a plastic tube inserted into my throat. I was sent to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, but then turned back to the ESI Hospital. The nose needed a plastic surgery and the mouth also another operation. I was transferred back to the Escorts Hospital, there they told my family to bring medicine, which cost about 18 to 20,000 Rs, which was not paid for by the ESI… the ESI said that everything will be provided by Escorts Hospital, “so why do you buy the medication yourself?” The doctors at Escorts Hospital later on said that they don’t know about the legal ins and outs. My brother had admitted me to the Metro Hospital, so the 56,000 Rs will have to be paid by my family. From the ESI I received 148 Rs a day from 15th September 2009 to 27th of July 2010. The expenditures were considerable… On 28th of July an ESI doctor attested that I was fit to work. I went to the factory. They sent me back and forth, told me to take my final dues and quit the job. I went to the labour department, through a trade union. There the company agreed in writing that they would take me back on duty. I worked the last three days in September and seven days in October, on pay day I asked for my wages, but the factory director swore at me and threatened me. I went back to the labour department. The company lawyer said that I should take my final dues and quit. I refused. The whole issue went to Chandigarh, to the labour court, the court date is on 1st of July 2011. Again, quite a lot of expenditures… my brother, nephew and my older daughter (my wife has just died) tell me that I should not think too much, that my mind has gone slightly bad, that I therefore should not think too much. As a consequence of the accident I am forced to a certain diet, I have to suck water through my nose regularly, my mouth and head hurts… I will have to go to the ESI medical board in order to get a compensation.

*** The Guns of Manesar and the Return of Patriarchal Corporatism: Wage Revision at Maruti Suzuki and Reports from Mars Associates and Motherson Sumi Workers -

We included a short note on the upcoming pay revision in the Maruti Suzuki plant in Manesar, which has turned into a stage-show for management propaganda. According to the head of Maruti Suzuki’s human resource department, the pay revision “will help stabilize the situation not only at Maruti, but the entire industrial belt in Haryana”. He continues wisely: “Twenty years back, the profile of workers was different. Now, almost 70 per cent of our workforce is in the age group of 24-26 years. These young guns always look for improvements.” Following the note on the wage revision are two reports of ‘young guns’ employed in Maruti’s supply-chain, at Mars Associates Ltd. and Motherson Sumi Systems.

Maruti likely to revise pay structure
7th of January 2012 – Times of India
“The move will help stabilize the situation not only at Maruti, but the entire industrial belt in Haryana, which is home to several auto companies. Their pay revision is due. We have set up a committee, which would evaluate their demands and negotiate those with the company management,” said S.Y. Siddiqui, managing executive officer (human resources and administration). “The wage settlement process will begin in March and it is expected to be completed by April-May.” The company has agreed to the demand of the Manesar workers for a union, separate from those of their colleagues at the company’s Gurgaon plant. Both Gurgaon and Manesar are located in Haryana. “It’s their right to form a union and nobody can stop them from doing that,” Siddiqui said. “We are really happy for them.” Siddiqui said the company has a lot of young workers at both plants and it has understood that it needs to respect their demands. “Twenty years back, the profile of workers was different. Now, almost 70 per cent of our workforce is in the age group of 24-26 years. These young guns always look for improvements.” Siddiqui admitted that “overwork” last year triggered workers to go on strike. “There was a huge demand in the market last year, especially for models like the DZire and the Swift,” he said. “There were occasions when there was a need for extra work. There was a huge pressure on production. Better communication with the workers should have avoided these strikes.” The company will hire 365 workers in this fiscal and at least 750 in the next one, Siddiqui said. A decision on whether to delay the Gujarat plant opening will be taken at the board meeting on 23 January, he added. Maruti Suzuki India Ltd reported a 63.6 per cent drop in net profit for the quarter ended 31 December 2011 from a year earlier. Maruti will seek to increase the proportion of locally made parts to minimize the impact of currency changes. Imports currently constitute 12 per cent of net revenue and vendors import the equivalent of another 10 per cent of net revenue.

Motherson Sumi Systems Worker
(Plot 21, Sector 18, Gurgaon)
The shift officially starts at 6 am, but the company buses arrive as early as 5:30 am. Even the workers who live in Gurgaon have to get up at 4 to 4:30 am to arrive ‘on time’, the workers living in Delhi get up at 3 or 3:30 am. The various assembly lines for electrical (car) harnesses are given names of different flowers in order to distinguish them, but the workload is heavy and less flowery. In the Gurgaon factory most of the work is done for Maruti Suzuki. Because of the unrest the production at the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar has been low during the summer months – the ready harnesses piled up in our plant, in the packaging area, in the canteen, next to our machines.

MARS ASSOCIATES PVT. LTD. Worker
(Plot 23, Sector III, IMT Manesar)
The company employs 20 permanent workers and 80 workers hired through contractors. We work on two 12-hours shifts, manufacturing parts for Honda, Hero Honda, Maruti Suzuki. There are no days off, we work on Sundays, even on festival days. The overtime is paid at single rate. Out of the eight pressure die-casting machines four remain defunct since three months. The machines run, though they are faulty – but it is the worker who operates the faulty machine who is sworn at, sometimes beaten. Accidents are frequent, this year two workers have cut their hands. The company does not fill in accident forms, workers are sent to private hospitals, money for treatment is cut from their wages and in the end they are sacked from the job. 650 Rs are cut from wages for ESI and PF, but the workers hired through contractors receive neither card nor PF form. Mars operates another factory in D-166, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, Delhi.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Two Decades of Unrest at Clutch Auto in Faridabad

Clutch Auto belongs to the first industrial companies in Faridabad. The first factory was opened in 1971, in the mid-1980s the company shifted to a new plant at Mathura Road, now Clutch Auto is about to open a factory in Rewari, near Manesar, which might result in down-sizing or closure of the Faridabad plant. The company is India’s largest clutch manufacturer, around 2 million per year, for the automobile industry, for agricultural machines and army tanks. In June 2011 about 350 permanent workers at Clutch Auto went on a 11-days strike. At the time the dispute at Maruti Suzuki in Manesar, about 50 km from Faridabad, was in full swing. The strike officially concerned wages and a ‘wage agreement’, but the relocation of the factory is looming in the background. We document a workers’ report published in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar. We also translated an older article relating the story of a strike at Clutch Auto two decades earlier in 1992, after 250 casual workers were sacked from the plant.

http://www.clutchauto.com/

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar – July 2011

Clutch Auto Worker
(12/4 Mathura Road, Faridabad)
Every month 100 Rs is cut from the 350 permanent workers wages and paid annually in form of LTC [Leave Travel Concessions] – the bosses say that this is inscribed in the agreement with the trade union. By June 2011, this money accumulated from 2010 had not been paid to the workers yet. The company had also put up a notice in the past, which said that workers are not supposed to take their paid holiday, that they will be compensated. Since 2006 there has been not paid holiday and people who ask for holiday are not granted any. Now, in May 2011 the company put up a notice saying that for any holiday taken the company will cut two day’s wages. In addition, management cut 1,800 Rs from the April wages of workers, saying that according to the wage agreement with the trade union they can cut wages if production targets are not met. On 12th of May 2011 the permanent workers refused to take the reduced wages… on 20th of May the company paid the wages without any reductions. The company opens a new factory in Rewari (around 40 km from Faridabad), they take machinery from the Faridabad plant, they hire new people for training… it looks like they want to get rid off the 350 permanent workers here. On 3rd of June the permanent workers engaged in a tool-down strike, they came to work, but did not start working. On 12th of June negotiations between management and union took place at the office of the Ministry of Labour. The permanent workers and their families ‘encircled’ (protest form) the house of the labour minister, the Clutch Auto workers live in his election constituency. The workers will get wages paid for the ten days of strike, five days are paid by the company and for the other five days workers will work from 20th to 30th of June for 12 hours instead of 8 hours per day. Apart from that a lot of reassurances are given. Production started again on 13th of June.

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar – May 1992

On 4th of April 1992, 250 casual workers were kicked out from this factory, situated at 12/4 Mathura Road. They were employed in the factory for eight to ten years continuously, and during this time the workers had been squeezed to the max. They had to jump from one machine to the other, relentlessly. They were not paid the minimum wage. They did not receive ESI. They worked 30 days a month and if they left work to go and drink water, smoke a bidi or go to the toilet, they were marked as ‘absent’ for half of the day and their wages were cut accordingly. Now, at Clutch Auto like at Universal Engineering or other factories, the conditions of the casual workers come to the fore. In July 1991, management and trade union negotiate a new three years wage agreement. The agreement concerned only the 500 permanent workers, the 250 casuals were not even mentioned. According to the current agreement the workers would have received a 150 Rs wage increase combined with an increase in work load – but management was not able to increase production to the extend they had wanted to. This is why they refused to increase the wages by 150 Rs. Under these conditions it was only natural that dissatisfaction amongst the permanent workers towards the trade union leaders grew. It seems that the union leaders, who are affiliated to the HMS, pushed forward the demand to give all casual workers a permanent status. The fact that management kicked out all casual workers on 4th of April is a link in this chain of events. The fact that management suspended 12 ‘prominent’ permanent workers on 27th of April and the subsequent back-and-forth is another link. In the factory production runs as normal. The casual workers, who had been sacked all of a sudden, are angry and they started to organise themselves. Against their protest management obtained a court rule saying that they have to stay in 50 feet distance from the factory gate. On 26th of April thugs paid by the management started to threaten these workers and ‘prominent’ casual workers were followed back to their homes, where the thugs also threatened their families. One problem is that the casual workers – following the advice of some people who want to turn themselves into prophets – started to put their hope in procedures at the labour department and other paper-tigers. A whole month has already been spoiled while waiting for the date of a hearing. Here we have to remember that in 1983 – 1984, during the period when Clutch Auto shifted the factory from sector 6 to Mathura Road, management sacked hundreds of permanent workers with the help of the CITU. At Mathura road INTUC staged the show the drama, and now it is HMS’s turn to continue the drama.

The back-and-forth heated up and on 11th of May 1992 workers at Clutch Auto went on strike. Workers stare at faces of the union leaders and wait what they have to say – the harmful consequence of which becomes visible. With having forced 100 of the casual workers to resign by end of May, management has sealed the fate of the demand to make all casuals permanent. And at Clutch Auto workers still sit in front of the gate, playing cards, putting their hope in leaders who run back-and-forth between labour department and other officers.

*** Green/Nano-Technology, the Long Shadow of the 20th/US-century and the Local Regime: A workers’ Report from Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd. -

Worker’s report on a dispute at Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd., in Gurgaon, in summer 2011. Workers had recently formed a trade union, which raised the demand for higher wages and permanent contracts for the casual workers. In response Usha management sacked all casual workers – followed by police repression and entanglement in the net of the labour law. The company Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd. is an interesting example for the close connection between so-called ‘green’ and ‘nano-technology’ and the large scale industries (automobile, aerospace, military-complex). The company history also shows the formation process of ‘global corporations’. Behind the formal display of joint-ventures (in Usha’s case with Honeywell, US; Siemens, Germany; Hitachi, Japan) and ‘capital and technology transfer’ we can see how these corporations grew as part of the state regimes and their ‘opening of markets’.

http://uaml.in/contact-us/

Usha Amorphous Metals Ltd. (UAML) manufactures ‘nano crystalline cores’ (amorphous alloy) for electrical switches used in solar inverters, wind generators, in automobiles, rail traction, aerospace and military technology. Usha Amorphous Metal Ltd. came out of a joint-venture with the US multi-national Honeywell. A Usha subsidiary linked up with the German equivalent Siemens. Both Honeywell and Siemens manufacture for the energy and military complex and the development of the corporation is very closely linked to the ‘expansive’ policies of their respective state regimes. Or as Honeywell management puts it: “Honeywell is a Fortune 100 company that invents and manufactures technologies to address tough challenges linked to global macrotrends such as safety, security, and energy”. Honeywell employs around 122,000 workers worldwide, including 19,000 ‘engineers and scientists’. Honeywell is a company of the 20th ‘US-century’, based in the oil and gas sector, expanding into automobile and military sector. “By 1941, the company was present in Chile, Panama, Trinidad, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa. By 1998, the company had operations in 95 countries through 83 wholly-owned subsidiaries and 13 joint ventures.”

http://www.missionready.com/

http://honeywell.com/About/Pages/our-history.aspx

Honeywell started to sell amorphous metal products on the Indian market in the 1980s. At the time the state in India curbed the possibility for ‘foreign’ companies to set-up ‘their own’ subsidiaries in India, instead they were ‘forced’ to engage in joint-ventures with ‘local’ companies. The distribution of shares amongst the factions of capital and the question of technology-transfer was given a formal frame-work. In 1987, Honeywell agreed with Usha India to create an Indian-based joint venture, UAML, to make and sell amorphous metal products. Usha India agreed to contribute real estate in exchange for more UAML shares – the family behind Usha India owns large pieces of land in Delhi area and in other regions. Honeywell agreed to contribute technology in exchange. This agreement was memorialized in a “Technology Transfer Agreement”, executed in February 1994. In 1995 the laws for foreign direct investment changed, also as part of the post-1990/91 crisis management and ‘structural re-adjustment – and allowed to set up 100 per cent ‘foreign-owned’ companies in manufacturing. Honeywell set up their ‘own’ unit and the joint-venture with Usha India finally broke up in 2008 – not without a long legal case about ‘monopolising knowledge’ and ‘active sabotage’ of the joint-venture. As we can read in the following, for workers it does not matter too much who their bosses are…

Usha Amorphous Metal Worker
(Plot 487 – 487, Udyog Vihar Phase III, Gurgaon)
In the factory 32 permanent workers and 100 casual workers manufacture parts for electrical transformers. The work load is high, there is hardly time to go on the toilet or drink water. People work 125 to 190 hours overtime per month, which is illegal, payment is 31 Rs per hour overtime, which is also illegal. Each month around three to four day wages get embezzled. After 10 – 20 years of employment the wages of the permanent workers are still only 6,000 to 7,000 Rs. In order to find some relieve workers joined a trade union. In March 2011 workers gave a demand notice to management, demanding a wage increase and permanent contracts for the casuals. In response to this management sacked all casual workers on 28th of April. The workers handed in a complaint at the labour office and started a protest camp in front of the factory. On 11th of May the police arrived, they started to threaten workers, “what are you doing here, go to the labour court”, and chased them away. An appointment was given at the labour department on 18th of May: the management claimed that the casual workers were not casuals, but workers hired through contractor and that currently there is no work at the factory. They said this while hiring new people on a daily level. The April wages were paid to the sacked 100 casual workers on the 18th of May, but the overtime money for March and April has not been paid.

*** Caparo Automobile Workers in Chennai: Short and Succesful Strike against Casualisation and Low Wages -

On 1st of December 2011, 500 workers in the stamping and foundry units of the automobile parts manufacturer Caparo (Sriperumbudur/Chennai plant) went on strike. After two days, management agreed to raise wages and to make 110 workers permanent. We document our rather limited information and ask friends and comrades in Chennai to supply further insights on this important struggle. The strike has to be seen as a continuation of the unrest at Maruti Suzuki or Munjal Showa in Manesar, Gurgaon – the unrest of a new generation of workers.

http://www.caparo.co.in/global_presence.html

The information on the numbers of workers who took part in the dispute differs. Some sources state that there are 800 workers employed at the plant, out of which 500 are ‘company trainees’, the rest workers hired through contractors. According to this source only the ‘company trainees’ took part in the dispute. Other sources claim that 500 out of 800 ‘company staff’ laid down tools and were joint by 600 workers hired through contractors. It would be important to know which version comes closer to truth.

Workers struck on Thursday, 1st of December 2011. On Saturday, 3rd of December, the Caparo management arrived from Delhi for negotiations. After management agreed on certain demands raised by the workers, work resumed on Sunday morning, 4th of December. “The training period is for about 1-1.5 years. But many of the workers have been here for three to four years without getting confirmed,” said Mr E. Muthukumar, union leader at Caparo. “The management has given confirmation order to 110 workers belonging to C3 grade. The rest of the workers will be made permanent over a period of time,” said Muthukumar. “There has also been a salary increase – from Rs 7,200 gross to Rs 10,200. The management has promised us that the other issue of recognition of our union will be taken up later”.

Caparo India is part of the UK-based Caparo group let up by Swraj Paul. Whoever is interested in the history of this ‘industrial captain’ should read about his involvement in the back-and-forth over the management leadership at Escorts in Faridabad during the early 1980s:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/workers-history/#fn141

The plant near Chennai supplies stampings, aluminium die-castings and forgings Nissan and Ford. Caparo India basically supplies parts to all major car manufacturers in India and for export, for example:
* Caparo Maruti Limited produces sheet metal and door-parts to Maruti Suzuki and General Motors from factories in Gurgaon, Halol and Bawal;
* A different plant in Halol manufactures axle and suspension systems for GM and for export to Thailand and Mexico;
* The plant in Pune manufactures stamped components for Tata Motors;
* There is a fastener manufacturing unit in Chopanki, another stampings facility in Greater Noida and Caparo aluminium foundry, Chennai.

http://www.caparo.co.in/global_presence.html

http://www.caparo.com/en-gb/worldwide/worldwide.aspx

3) According to Plan -
News on (Local) Re-Structuring and Crisis

*** The Failing ‘Kingdom of Dreams’: The Global Crunch and the Local Crisis of Real Estate -

In the last month we could observe how two very ‘finance’ sensitive sectors slowly, but surely crunched under lack of liquidity – the airlines and the real estate sector. These are ‘early symptoms’, hinting at the condition of the general economy, the root of the problem lying not in ‘sector specific issues’, but in the general squeeze: rising costs of credits vs. lower expectations of future profits.

The fiscal deficit of the state in India increased after the 2008 bail-out, subsequently the state finances its debts by selling state bonds to ‘private local’ banks (‘domestic market borrowing’). The share of ‘domestic market borrowing’ in financing the federal states’ fiscal deficits increased from around 15 per cent in the 1990s to around 75 per cent today – the ‘domestic market’ share for the central state’s borrowing is currently at about 85 per cent. Like in the global north we can see a close interdependence between ‘state’ and ‘financial sector’: the state bails-out ‘the banks’, not in order to ‘stuff the bankers’, but because its own deficit largely depends on ‘market borrowings’. Behind this we can see the need of the ruling class to ‘centralise’ the global command over the credit system, BUT to maintain the bourgeois appearance of separate economic and political spheres – they have seen how quickly ‘state power’ gets under fire nowadays once it is seen not only as a form of political oppression, but also the source of economic misery.

Through the ‘bailout’ the fiscal deficit increases. The regime forecasts a fiscal deficit of 4.6 per cent of GDP for this fiscal year, but their own officials question this: “It is quite clear that it will be very significantly worse. I can’t quantify,” Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of planning commission, said in an interview in mid January. Conservative estimates foresee a deficit of 6 per cent plus – in 1990, before the declaration of state bankruptcy, the fiscal deficit was around 3 per cent. The ‘trust’ in the government as a guarantor for financial stability is eroded: Indian government bonds are among the 10 riskiest in the world, according to a study issued by BlackRock in December 2011. Thereby the ‘general costs’ for borrowing increases: interests on the benchmark 10-year ‘Indian’ government securities jumped to above 9 per cent by end of 2011, an annual increase of more than 1 per cent. These costs trickle down into the wider economy.

At the same time the ‘expectations of future profits’ on the global markets look rather bleak – a global market which the ‘Indian economy’ is increasingly integrated in: India’s (foreign) trade to GDP ratio increased from 20 per cent in 1993 to 45 per cent in 2007; ratio of foreign assets and liabilities to GDP increased from 43 per cent in 1993 to 85 per cent in 2007. The global slow down translates directly into a slow down in the ‘Indian’ market. The request by the Indian government that the state-owned companies should stop “sitting on piles of cash”, and instead spend it on investment in ‘infrastructure’ seems like a rather helpless appeal.

The ‘credit crunch’ at this point leaves the sphere of figures and percentages, the realm of mathematics and regulations, and reveals its origin: the ‘real antagonism’ in the ‘the real capitalist world’. Here certain ‘finance’ sensitive sectors become ‘precursors’, e.g. airlines (global situation, oil prices, ‘state finance’) and real estate sector.

In autumn 2008, the financial trouble of ‘Indian Airlines’ – treated as a symbol of the booming subcontinent – became the stage-show for the state bail-out, a ‘proof of trust’. In October 2008 Jet Airlines had announced the dismissal of 1,900 workers. We then were shown some symbolic protests by the unions, fiery speeches by various political representatives, a state intervention, a repenting general manager and the public reinstatement of the workers. The state guaranteed financial support. Three years later the trouble returns. Kingfisher Airline is close to bankrupt, five of six main Indian Airlines declared losses in 2011. In mid-January 2012, pilots and cabin crews of Air India went on a wildcat one-day strike, protesting non-payment of their wages. The back-log of allowance payments had reached four months.

The situation is similar in the real estate sector, which makes up around 10 per cent of the Indian GDP (including construction, real estate related financial services etc.). Interest rates for mortgages and other real estate credits are high: The central bank’s repurchase rate, currently 8.5 per cent, is the highest level since 2008. The costs for interest payments for real estate developers increased by around 10 per cent on average during 2011, e.g. India’s biggest developer and ‘neo-liberal founder’ of New Gurgaon, DLF paid a record 5.26 billion Rs of interest in the third quarter of 2011, up from 4.96 billion Rs in the prior period. Combined net debt of the 11 biggest Indian developers rose 19 per cent in 2011. The pace of new project launches has severely been crippled in 2011 – a decline of about 50 per cent. Of the total housing inventory pertaining to the under construction projects, 39 per cent are lying unsold. Of the total office stock of 367 million square feet in the major cities, around a quarter remains vacant at the end of 2011.

The credit crunch translates itself back into the ‘real world’ in form of urban deserts – in particular in Gurgaon. The pillars of three symbols of the neo-liberal boom in Gurgaon are shaken: DLF itself, the Reliance SEZ and the ‘Kingdom of Dreams’. DLF stared a sell-out of assets to bring down its debt of Rs 22,500 crore in September 2011. In December 2011, DLF sold its 60 per cent share in a Pune SEZ, DLF also exited from Noida IT Park and sold real estate land in Gurgaon.

In January 2012 the Haryana government announced that it would take back 1,383 acres previously sold to Reliance Industries in Gurgaon. RIL and the Haryana government had entered into a deal in 2006 for setting up the multi-product SEZ, at the time hailed as ‘Asia’s biggest SEZ’ and showcased as a key achievement of the Congress government in the state. Chief Minister Hooda had, on the day of the signing, claimed that the project would create jobs for 500,000 people and that the state would earn Rs 10000 crore from the projects. Six years later, in January 2012 he said: “Yes, we are in talks with Reliance (with regard to handover of the Gurgaon land to the state government) because it has not been able to set up the SEZ.

In January 2012, also the ‘Kingdom of Dreams’, a Bollywood entertainment mall, in Gurgaon started failing. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) announced “to give one last chance to the city’s entertainment hub, Kingdom of Dreams (KoD), to pay up the Rs 9 crore it owes to HUDA. If KoD fails to comply this time, it faces closure.” HUDA and Great Indian Nautanki Company had signed an agreement in February 2008. According to the agreement, the firm had to pay Rs 36 lakh per month as rent. The first two notices were issued in June 2011 – the pending rent amount increased to Rs 7.63 crore by November.

We will see how the crisis of the ‘kingdom of nightmares’ will impact on the wider working class reality, on the industrial companies closely linked to the real estate bubble…

*** Middle-Class is Revolting -

The fact that the iron fix-points of society – money, commodity, state power, professional advancement etc. – slowly turn into sand-castles, leaves its impact on the mind not only of workers, but also of the middle-waged classes. Recently Gurgaon witnessed some outbreaks of ‘middle class anger’ towards the commodity-form. ‘Middle class’ people who lose more time in traffic jams on the National Highway, than the new highway would allow them to ‘win’ by speed, forcibly opened the toll gates which are meant to ‘finance’ the highway. Young ‘middle-class’ people came to see ‘Metallica’ in Gurgaon – a band, which is known for their arsehole attitude towards ‘free music downloads or sharing’ on the data highway. After the announcement that the concert would be postponed, people smashed the concert venue. Two short news items on pent-up anger…

On 28th of October 2011 Metallica was supposed to play in Gurgaon. More than 25,000 fans flocked to the venue ‘Leisure Valley’, with some paying more than 10,000 Rs for tickets (current monthly average wage for industrial workers around 5,000 Rs). After the news of postponement was announced on stage, disappointed fans vandalised the venue ‘Leisure Valley’, which can seat around 30,000 people. They broke barriers, climbed on stage and tore posters, smashed loudspeakers and equipment. “The show was cancelled with no prior information to the ticket buyers or [to] the district administration – which could have caused [a] law and order problem,” explained a government spokesman.

On 2nd of January 2012, protesters, who have been demanding the removal of two toll plazas on Gurgaon Expressway, forcibly opened the toll gates at Kherki Dhaula plaza for an hour or longer. The incident took place after villagers from nearby areas held a meeting to plan their future course of action. Almost a month ago, on December 4, the same group had forcibly opened the toll gates of the 32-lane plaza. On Monday, the demonstration by the Toll Hatao Samiti and some of the residents’ organizations also received support from the local Hindu-Nationalist BJP and INLD. “Gurgaon is the only city where two toll plazas have been allowed within 20km of municipal limits. The private company is doing nothing to improve road infrastructure,” said one of the ‘leaders’. The private developer, Delhi-Gurgaon Super Connectivity Limited (DGSCL), has sought financial compensation from the Haryana. At least 190,000 cars pass through the 32-lane toll plaza every working day.

GurgaonWorkersNews – Newsletter 46 (January 2012)

Gurgaon in the industrial belt of Delhi is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young proletarianised middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers up-rooted by the rural crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh, China or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, new industrial zones turn soil into over-capacities. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk

———-

The Different Faces of Crisis – January 2012 Issue

*** I / We in Crisis – A Workers’ Life and Day
On its front-page, Faridabad Majdoor Samachar frequently publishes workers’ stories, relating both to their daily experiences and their life. This is less about ‘story-telling’ and ‘personal accounts’ as such, but about a collective process of discovering not only how the current system shapes our ‘private’ life according to its inner structure, but also how in seemingly ‘individual’ workers’ experiences lies a creative, productive and antagonistic wealth of the working class – the experiences of having worked in rural and urban areas, in various industries, in households and factories; of having gone through the systemic repressive institutions of family and school; of having found ways to survive and undermine the structural pressures. We translated the story of a 37 years old worker.

*** We are the Crisis – Struggles of Teacher Trainees
In most of the recent larger working class mobilisations teachers played a prominent role – from protests against austerity in Spain to the revolt against the regime in Egypt. There are various reasons for this prominent role. There is the obvious trend of proletarianisation of the profession ‘teacher’. The casualisation of ‘semi-skilled’ teaching staff (assistant teachers), the standardisation of work (teaching modules), the austerity measures in the public sector, have eroded the status and conditions of teachers. In many cases teachers become low paid social security guards who are supposed not only to take care of pre-unemployed youth, but also provide them with an illusion of a future. We document the recent struggle of BTC trainees (Basic Training Certificate: basic teaching in primary schools) in Dehradun. The BTC teachers are low paid teachers to teach mainly in poorer areas. They struggled against having to work unpaid for months on so-called ‘practical training’.

*** The Global Crisis Re-Surfaces in India
In autumn 2008 the capitalist strategists still talked about the potential for a ‘decoupling’ of the ‘emerging markets’ (China, India, Brazil etc.) from the global crisis. It was clear from the start that the ‘decoupling’ was a myth, a wishful thinking. We summarised some basic figures showing the link: on the impact of the slump 2008, on the national and global bail-out in 2009, on the currency war and state of inflation in 2010, and finally on the Indo-Euro crisis in the second half of 2011.

*** Suggested Reading: Contributions to the Global Overthrow
The global and historical character of the current crisis forces us to coordinate both debate and practice ‘for workers self-emancipation’ on an international scale.

An illustrated book by prole.info, which takes one seemingly simple thing – a house – and examines the social relations around it. From the construction site to the city, from gender roles to trade unions.
The Housing Monster

Blog for the exchange of experiences concerning organising at the workplace.
Re-Composition

*** Delhi Calling: Get Involved in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel
To abolish the global work/war house will take more than informative exercise! If you live in Delhi area, please be welcomed to take part in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel – a workers’ coordination. We distribute around 9,000 copies of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on ten days each month in various industrial areas around Delhi. You can also participate in the workers’ meeting places which have been opened in various workers’ areas. If you are interested, please get in touch. For more background on Faridabad Majdoor Talmel:
Faridabad Majdoor Talmel

—————

*** I / We in Crisis – A Workers’ Life and Day

On its front-page, Faridabad Majdoor Samachar frequently publishes workers’ stories, relating both to their daily experiences and their life. This is less about ‘story-telling’ and ‘personal accounts’ as such, but about a collective process of discovering not only how the current system shapes our ‘private’ life according to its inner structure, but also how in seemingly ‘individual’ workers’ experiences lies a creative and productive wealth of the working class – the experiences of having worked in rural and urban areas, in various industries, in households and factories; of having gone through the systemic repressive institutions of family and school; of having found ways to survive and undermine the structural pressures.

We have translated and published workers’ his/her-stories in following earlier newsletters:
no.17
no.24
no.31
no.34
no.42

A 37 years old worker – FMS no.276 – June 2011

I get up at 5 o’clock in the morning. There is no toilet, one has to go to the open space next to the rail-tracks. You have to be careful, I have seen two people being killed by trains – one of them was a relative of mine. After having washed, I prepare food together with my mate. In the morning we make vegetables and roti. The water comes from a private borewell, this is why we have to pay 150 Rs for water per month. We have finished preparing the food by 7:30 am. Washing, eating and then at 8:15 you have to leave for the factory.

Some things come up in the mind again and again. When Indira Gandhi died there was holiday at school. I was eight, nine years old then. I saw how, at the station, three wagons of a train were set on fire. After having dragged Sikhs out of the wagons, one after the other, the police beat them up. The crowd kept standing at a distance. They brought one Sikh and tied him up in a sack. When the policemen asked for petrol from people in the nearby shanties, I kept on standing to see what they would do. The policemen sprinkled the sack with petrol and set fire to it. I ran away in fear. There was a curfew for three days. When I think about it now, it seems strange to me – how was this possible?

The shift starts at 8:30am . At the moment I work in the New Industrial Area in Faridabad, in a company called Sisaudia Engineering. I work here in the Honda department, I operate an industrial drill, even though I have ITI (Industrial Training Institute) training in refridgeration and air-conditioning. Currently the minimum wage for unskilled workers is 4,503 Rs per month, but in this factory I earn 3,500 Rs.

I finished my ITI training in 2000. Our village is in East Uttar Pradesh and the ITI is about 20 kilometres away from our place – I cycled back and forth every day. I received 700 Rs student allowance per year. I also worked on the fields. My father was employed as a permanent worker at Gedore-Jhalani Tools factory in Faridabad, but for several years they had hardly been paid any wages. I arrived in Delhi to do my apprenticeship. The widowed mother-in-law had a house in Trilokpuri, but there were expenses for three young brother-in-laws and two sister-in-laws. Instead of doing an apprenticeship I started working as a security guard in Nanj Supermarket in Greater Kailash (South Delhi). I was working for Gajraj Securities, but hired through a contractor from NOIDA, who paid 3,800 Rs. I worked there for three and a half months, then the job was finished – a manager had embezzled three to four crore Rs. After looking for work for ten days I found a job at Kapeel Export factory in NOIDA Sector 11, they paid 1,200 Rs. I learned how to print and embroider clothes with machines. After having worked for some time the piece-rate wages went up to 4 to 6,000 Rs. I worked there for two years. Then my father fell ill and I returned to the village.

When we arrive at the factory we have to carry the raw material, which is stored outside the factory, to the machines. In 8 hours you have to drill 1800 pieces. I don’t have a particular fear of accidents. While working, you think about all kind of things.

After I had finished my eighth class in Faridabad I went back to the village. My grandfather had become old. I started to plough the fields with the bullocks and did other work. I finished the tenth class in a school three miles away. I enrolled in the Intercollege in Pratapgarh and lived in the student hostel there. They paid 50 Rs per month student allowance. I went back to the village only at weekends – I worked on the fields there, and when there was too much work, I took days off at the college. My mother went to Faridabad in order to have an eye surgery, around this time I failed my eleventh class. Because of mental pressure I also failed once in the twelfth class – my wife died after a miscarriage. We had lived together for many days, we were married when I was in the ninth class. I finished the twelfth class in a private college. When my neighbour – who taught in a neighbouring village – opened a school in our village, I joined him. When we had enrolled 250 children, each of us four teachers would earn around 500 Rs. I stopped teaching when I had to both study for ITI and do the work on the fields.

At 12:30 there is a lunch break. There are 400 workers in the factory, but there is no canteen. There is no place to sit and eat. I go to our shanty and eat there. And at 1 o’clock you have to be back at the drill.

In 1993, after having finished my tenth class I was trying hard to find a job. I filled in many application forms. I went to Bophal, Buvaneshvar, Jodhpur in order to apply for jobs as a gangman for the railways. Then on the bases of the ITI I went to Mumbai, Ilahabad, Lakhnow, Kolkata in order to get a job as an assistant driver. In 1998, I went to an interview for a job at the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation department. A lot of job seeking people came at the same day. Seeing this, the administrators said that the interviews were cancelled and that we would receive further information by letter. People started throwing stones. The place was closed down, people left. This letter never arrived. After having finished the ITI I put my name down on the list of the employment office in Pratapgarh. They never sent anything. I renewed the enrolment in 2003 and 2006. Again nothing. In 2006, they told me not to put my name down again in future. I got furious. In the meantime I had seen governments changing from Congress, BJP, SP, BSP…

At 2:30 the contractor provides tea. The wages are low, but there is no particular atmosphere of complaining here. I know some of the people who work here from before, acquaintances, friends…

In 2009 the village council leader himself issued a job card under the MNREGA (Rural Employment Scheme). In 2010 during the monsoon the village leader said: “Your money has arrived for the 25 days of work that you have done. Open an account and you can get the money.” I did not even work under this scheme… figure that out. I then met a lot of other people who had not worked, but in whose name money was drawn for MNREGA. The village leader called the bank manager to his home and asked him to open accounts. When it? was to get the money from the bank the village leader said I should go to the bank and that the contractor (who was supposed to have undertaken the work under MNREGA) has already taken the pass book there. I went to the bank, I withdrew 2,500 Rs from the account, out of which 1,700 Rs was taken by the contractor… the village leader is illiterate and he once received a reward from the prime minister.

No one stops working at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. The overtime is only paid at single rate, but nevertheless, no one could make ends meet if they did not work 12 hours a day. Some workers work 200 hours overtime per month.

I married again in 1997. We had children. My father did not receive his outstanding wages from his company. Even in the village they sell packaged goods nowadays (everything becomes more expensive). The bullocks have been sold and 1.5 bigha are now ploughed by tractor. The school fees are 800 Rs per month. My wife works as a domestic nurse, but she does not get a fixed salary, nor a honorarium, she works piece-rate: for a childbirth 600 Rs, a vaccination 50 Rs, a sterilisation 150 Rs. But she also has to pay, e.g. 200 Rs for the room for a monthly meeting – it is difficult to earn enough to cover expenses. We wanted to form a Dr. Ambedkar Self-Aid Group, but there is no space, where would you keep the goats? What will you give the buffalos to eat? There is no hay. The chicken spread their dirt everywhere. I thought about starting sewing, but I didn’t know how to. I tried to learn, but was not too successful. I thought again about an apprenticeship, after the CTI I could then complete my ITI master. I arrived again in Faridabad, to do an apprenticeship in refridgeration and air-conditioning at Whirlpool company, but they said that they wouldn’t take anyone who comes from a different state. So I then started to work as a casual worker at Whirlpool. At the cabinet line there were three permanent workers, six casuals and two workers hired through contractors – their wages were 20,000 Rs, 4,200 Rs and 3,500 to 4,000 Rs respectively. Because there was too much work to be done back home on the field I left this job in August 2010 and went back to the village.

We finish working at 8 or 9 o’clock and buy vegetables on the way back to the shanty. Between my mate and myself, whoever comes home first starts to prepare dinner. We make dal, rice and roti – all in all this takes about two hours. We go to sleep around 11 o’clock or midnight. I cannot sleep… I really can’t stand the noise around, the trains which pass nearby really disturb you. You never get a good night’s sleep. The head becomes heavy.

*** We are the Crisis – Struggles of Teacher Trainees

In most of the recent larger working class mobilisations teachers played a prominent role – from protests against austerity in Spain to the revolt against the regime in Egypt. There are various reasons for this prominent role. There is the obvious trend of proletarianisation of the profession ‘teacher’. The casualisation of ‘semi-skilled’ teaching staff (assistant teachers), the standardisation of work (teaching modules), the austerity measures in the public sector, have eroded the status and conditions of teachers. In many cases teachers become low paid social security guards who are supposed not only to take care of pre-unemployed youth, but also provide them with an illusion of a future. In this sense the demand for teachers increased. The fact that teachers are often at the forefront of current public protests has two main reasons, both reflecting the arbitrary position of teaching work. Firstly, the cohesion amongst teachers is less constituted through the work process, therefore the greater need for a ‘formal’ organisation, which tends to be more visible. Secondly, in many cases teachers still appeal to their social status as ‘providers of education’, which gives them the credibility to protest, not only in their own interest, but a wider interest. As we can see, both reasons have an arbitrary element regarding to the possible generalisation of teachers’ struggles as ‘struggles of workers’. These arbitrary tendencies will surface first of all in conflicts within the ‘education sector’, once the divisions between various grades of ‘teaching staff’ (assistant, casuals, trainees etc.) impose themselves as essential problems for a ‘common’ struggle. We document the recent struggle of BTC trainees (Basic Training Certificate: basic teaching in primary schools) in Dehradun. The BTC teachers are low paid teachers to teach mainly in poorer areas. They struggled against having to work unpaid for months on so-called ‘practical training’.

Struggles of BTC Trainees in Dehradun
(www.nagrik.com)

On 22nd of November 2011, demanding direct recruitment in the state government service during their third semester of the Basic Training Certificate (BTC), hundreds of teachers undergoing training in different districts of the state, protested in front of the civil secretariat in Dehradun. The protesters burnt their clothes to register their protest against the alleged step-motherly attitude of the administration. When they tried to get to the administration building, they were attacked by the police. Twelve trainees, including one female trainee, were injured and 200 were arrested. After two days they were released without charges. The ‘crime’ they had committed was to resist being sent to work (under the name of ‘practical training’) to remote areas of the state without permanent contract and without wage.

These trainees had not passed yet the exam of the third semester – so for the government they were officially unskilled. The government cajoled them by saying that if they would accept to work in formerly closed schools in remote areas they might get a permanent contract even if their training had not been completed. They were reassured that they would be called back for exams after three months. BTC trainees said that the last batch of trainees had not been called back from ‘practical training’ for one and a half years! In addition, the government did not want to pay them a single Paisa for these one and a half years of work. The BTC trainees started their movement in order to get an answer to their question about their future – after having paid from their own pockets to go to remote areas and still not knowing how things will turn out. The government wants to profit from these trainees by re-opening schools in remote areas during the time of elections – but they don’t want to give them a permanent status.

After the attack on 22nd of November the order to start ‘practical training’ was revoked and postponed to the 15th of December. On 28th of November a meeting was supposed to take place. The trainees who were released from jail confirmed their resolution to demand an answer and called for a protest sit-in at the education directorate in Nanurkheda. The issue is that in the 13 districts of the state around 1267 trainees of education and training institutes are kept in a cloud of uncertainty. According to a government order they can be sent to ‘practical training’ in other districts even before completing their training. Their fellow trainees of other institutes are paid 6,000 Rs honorarium for the last six months of similar ‘practical training’, those BTC trainees on correspondence courses got 7,500 Rs – the BTC trainees find themselves in the dilemma that the competition for permanent jobs increases – should they demand from the government to tell them for which position they will be hired and for which wage?

The true stance of the state government revealed itself when an office bearer of the BTC trainee union came to Dehradun to meet the Minister for Education – and the Minister refused to meet the representative. Instead the education secretary told the trainee union officer that they have to follow the government orders. In the first week of November the BTC trainees returned to Dehradun in form of a movement – to wake the government who had refused any talks. Trainees from 13 different BTC institutes assembled on the Parade Maidan in Dehradun. A workers’ representative said that on 21st of November the ministry called and promised that if the trainees would stop their protest assembly they could meet the central minister. So they went back to Nanurkheda and encircled the education secretariat instead. The central minister phoned the next day and said that the exams for the third semester will take place soon, but he did not agree to the main demand. The education secretary repeated this – the dissatisfied trainees intensified the protest in front of the secretariat. On the same day in the evening the patience of the trainees found an end, they started to tear down the police barricades around the secretariat. The police answered with a baton charge and arrested 199 trainees, 80 of them women. After verbal support of all opposition parties the trainees were released after two days. The released trainees reassembled on Parade Maidan and said that they keep up the protest till 28th of November, the date of the promised meeting with government representatives. They say that if the meeting won’t take place they will encircle the residence of the central minister. The education ministry sent out a letter to all district education officers saying that BTC trainees are not supposed to be sent to remote districts, but to schools were there are either too many pupils or to few teachers.

The state minister for education informed that there are 2,720 vacant posts in primary schools – at the same time the minister tells the trainees that they will hire the 3367 BTC trainees once they have finished their exams plus 2,200 trainees on special BTC courses, a total of 5,000 posts – these are empty promises. Out of 882 trainees on special BTC courses around 60 per cent work as teaching staff in RSS (Hindu Nationalists) run Shishu Mandirs – the government is under pressure to give jobs to these trainees once they have finished their courses. The opposition parties officially support the agitation, trying to convert the teachers to foot-soldiers of their respective parties.

On 18th of December 2011 members of Uttarakhand BTC Trainee Shiksha Mitra Federation staged another protest at Parade Ground and later took out a rally to the residence of the Education Minster in Dehradun. The demands include appointment of BTC Trainees to the posts of assistant teacher after their completion of BTC training and allowance of `10,000 Rs to Shiksha Mitra during training.

*** The Global Crisis Re-Surfaces in India

In autumn 2008 the capitalist strategists still talked about the potential for a ‘decoupling’ of the ‘emerging markets’ (China, India, Brazil etc.) from the global crisis. It was clear from the start that the ‘decoupling’ was a myth, a wishful thinking.

The Impact of the Slump 2008
The impact was immediate. The main stock-market index (Sensex) fell by more than 50 percent during the year 2008, from 20,800 in January 2008 to under 10,000 in mid-October. The mass-sales of shares and securities held by foreign investors and the subsequent massive US Dollars outflow resulted in the largest fall of the foreign exchange reserves in eight years. While in July 2008 the reserves stood still at 300 billion US Dollars, by November 2008 they had plunged down to 258 billion. The withdrawal of capital from the Rupee caused a massive devaluation of the currency. Early 2008 the Rupee stood at 39.25 US Dollars, by end of November 2008 it had depreciated to 50.5 US Dollars. In October 2008 for the first time in more than a decade the manufacturing output of the Indian industry declined.

The National and Global Bail-Out 2009
In 2009, the state in India induced money into the markets, which postponed the impact of the crisis and shifted its focus to the question of state debts. “We had to inject Rs 80,000 crores as stimulus package to overcome the crisis, which helped arrest further deterioration of the Indian economy,” finance minister Mukherjee said in April 2010. These policies, like in the rest of the world, increased state debts. India’s public debt was at 78 per cent of GDP in 2008/09 and increased to 82 per cent in 2010. Despite the global stimulus packages, foreign direct investment inflows into India dipped 5.16 per cent to USD 25.89 billion in 2009-10. India’s exports declined 4.7 per cent to USD 176.5 billion in 2009-10. Export forms a fair chunk of the GDP (1988: 6 per cent / 2008: around 20 per cent). The fiscal deficit increased by 25 per cent in 2009 to 2010.

The Currency War and Inflation in 2010
The low interest rate policies in the Global North – meaning: the attempt by the states to provide cheap money as investment incentive to corporations – sent off a wave of ‘hot money’ to the emerging markets, where investors hoped to be able to find a profitable short-term investment. This caused inflation rates to rise dramatically. Indian inflation hit double digits in May 2010, the highest in any G20 nation. The Indian reserve bank had to raise interest rates again and again in order to curb inflation, which forced a lot of companies to lend money on the international markets, increasing the (corporate) foreign debts – between March 2009 and March 2010 external debts increased by 16.5 per cent to 261.5 billion USD. The ‘fluctuating’ character of investments revealed itself when the state debt crisis in Greece sent shocks through the global markets in May 2010 – 20 billion USD short-term invested capital was extracted from ‘Indian’ markets within a couple of months.

The Indo-Euro Crisis in 2011
The Euro-crisis – the running out of the stimulating impact of state credits induced in 2009 and the hitting home of state debts – reached India in the last quarter of 2011 and fortified the general trend towards a further downturn. Between August and December 2011 the Indian Sensex (main stock market) lost 18 per cent. In November 2011 alone, 600 million USD ‘foreign short-term investment’ was withdrawn from the Indian securities market. The ‘hot money’ of 2010 cooled down – in summer 2011, when the Euro crisis threatened to trigger a second global slump worse than the one in late 2008, the ‘hot money’ streamed back from the ‘insecure’ emerging markets to the USD markets. This caused massive depreciations of local currencies. Between July and December 2011, the price of the Indian Rupee fell by more than 16 percent, to a rate Rs 53.80 to the USD – a record low.

The persistent fall of the rupee has also added to the burden on the trade deficit, which in October 2011 widened to a 17-year high of $19.6bn. The total trade deficit for 2011/12 is expected to widen sharply to between $155 billion and $160 billion from $104.4 billion a year ago. As a consequence of the weak Rupee the petrol prices are supposed to rise by 1 Rs per litre from January 2012 – around 80 per cent of the petrol in India has to be imported. In 2010 the government changed the legal framework for oil price regulations, an act to make ‘the people’ pay for the state’s ‘corporate stimulation’ – since then petrol prices have been hiked several times. Higher petrol prices will keep inflation up. India’s headline inflation has been above 9 per cent during 2011 despite 13 rate increases since March 2010 that have lifted the repo rate to a three-year high of 8.5 per cent from 4.75 per cent. The high interest rates choke investments.

The government lowered the GDP growth forecast for 2011 to below 7 per cent, compared to 8.5 per cent in 2010. In October 2011 industrial output fell for the first time in more than two years. Capital goods production, considered a barometer of investment sentiment in the country, fell 25.5 per cent. In 2011 car sales in India posted the steepest fall in nearly 11 years.

Consequently the state has trouble meeting its crisis budget. Net tax revenues have grown just 7.3 per cent in the first seven months of 2011-12, while state expenditure has jumped by about 10 per cent during the same period. Some economists are now projecting that the fiscal deficit by the end of the financial year could be as high as 5.7 per cent of GDP. The state had calculated to re-finance its debts by selling state assets, but the economic slump foiled the plan: only one public sector undertaking (PSU) hit the capital market in 2011 raising only Rs 1,145 crore, the plan had aimed at several ‘privatisations’ which were supposed to raise Rs 40,000 crore.

Is a re-make of the 1991 foreign debt default possible? The Indian (state) banks have 314 billion USD of foreign currency reserves. Outstanding foreign debts, which will have to be repaid within a year, stand at about half of this amount. The recent deal with Japan of a 15 billion USD currency swap can be seen as a sign that liquidity problems are severe. With the value of the Rupee declining, it will become costlier to repay the debts.

The figures above confirm that there is no ‘decoupling’, but rather a very immediate relation between the ‘continental markets’. Austerity measures or monetary policies in the north almost immediately impact the situation in the ‘emerging markets’. It also shows that despite a seemingly huge ‘internal market’ – 800 million people living in India’s semi-rural areas – this ‘internal market’ has little weight once it comes to the question of capitalist boom or demise. The regime in India will have to follow its counterparts in the north and push through with ‘unpopular’ decisions.

The back-and-forth concerning the question whether foreign direct investment should be allowed in retail sector (allowing Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour etc. to open supermarkets directly) can be seen as a symbol of the dilemma the regime is facing: economically the regime is in dire need for further capital inflows, socially it does not want a head-on confrontation with a social strata (medium and small traders) which quantitatively and qualitatively might prove to be the last stable ‘popular’ barrier between the regime and the rural and urban proletarian poor.

The ‘political expression’ of this strata, in the form of the anti-corruption movement Hazare’s, although ‘annoying’, manages to channel wider ‘popular discontent’ and re-focus it on the political-parliamentary arena. They thereby provide an invaluable service of social counter-insurgency for the ruling class, which weights as heavy as the pressure from the ‘economic’ figures above. Economic and social figures, which, let’s be honest, resemble scarily the figurations of recently toppled regimes in northern Africa (food price developments, foreign debts, graduate unemployment, historical parallels of IMF enforced adjustments etc.). The decision to post-pone the opening of the retail market has to be seen as a state of economic-political paralysis of the regime, facing the social abyss. Let’s help the regime with a little push.

GurgaonWorkersNews – Newsletter 45 (December 2011)

Gurgaon in the industrial belt of Delhi is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young proletarianised middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers up-rooted by the rural crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh, China or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, new industrial zones turn soil into over-capacities. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk

In the December 2011 issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Story by Proletarian Tenant on Landlordism in Tekhand, Okhla Industrial Area -

A working class tenant describes how landlords in Tekhand try to squeeze extra money by using the tenants’ dependency on water and electricity – and how collective steps of tenants can undermine this.

*** Workers’ Reports from (Garment) Factories in Gurgaon and Manesar -

Eleven short workers’ reports on conditions in Gurgaon’s factories, amongst others at Edigear (Puma, Adidas), House of Pearl (JC Penny), Modelama (GAP, Old Navy).

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** IMPORTANT Unfinished Business: Further Material for Debate on Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Struggle -

Between June and October 2011 thousands of workers took part in factory occupations, wildcat strikes and protest camps at Maruti Suzuki and other automobile factories in Manesar, near Gurgaon. We document further material on this important strike and call for an open debate about the lessons of this dispute. We translated two long articles published in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar providing important new details and summarised some material about the general context of the struggle.

*** Delayed Notes on Harsoria Healthcare Workers’ Strike in Gurgaon -

In April 2011 a dispute erupted at the factory of the health equipment manufacturer Harsoria. After initial collective steps on the shop-floor and a 72 hours factory occupation, workers followed the legal order and union advice to leave the factory. They were attacked by the police and had difficulties not to get entangled in conflicts of factory union representatives, regional union leaders and company management.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies

*** The “Spiritual”-Industrial Complex: Involvement of Brahmakumaris and Radha Soami Panth in Industrial Management in Gurgaon -

Religious sects like Brahmakumaris and Radha Soami Panth not only engage in commodity production by selling products for ‘spiritual tourism’, they get directly involved in management of industrial relations and education of manual workforce. After lockouts at Denso in 2010 and Maruti Suzuki in 2011, the multi-national management engaged Brahmakumaris to deal with the agitated ‘human capital’, while the Radha Soami Panth supplies semi-skilled young workers to companies like Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) in Manesar. A workers’ report describes the ‘spiritual-industrial’ connection.

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** Suggested Reading: Contributions to the Global Overthrow -

The global and historical character of the current crisis forces us to coordinate both debate and practice ‘for workers self-emancipation’ on an international scale. Following texts are selective, but we think that they can stand as examples for ‘general theses’, ‘concrete analysis’ and ‘historical debate’ of class struggle and revolutionary movement.

Leaflet by InsurgentNotes on the Occupy Movement in the USA

New Magazine from the US focusing on the Proletarian Tendencies within the Occupy Movement

Article from Wildcat on Rural Class Relations in Indonesia

Article from Wildcat on Migrant Agricultural Workers Strike in Southern Italy

*** GurgaonWorkersHistory: Voices from the Local Working Class History -

We translated an article published in the Hindi magazine ‘Militant Worker’, Sangharshrat Mehantkash no.3, dealing with the history of working class struggle in Dharuhera, near Gurgaon. The first industrial area was set up in 1977, the first official movement kicked off at East India textile company in 1984. The article describes the Radhu Yadav’s Unemployed Army in 1985 and the first strikes at Omax Auto in 1986. Both in regards to the debate on the struggle at Maruti Suzuki and the importance of a workers’ historiography, we suggest reading Sergio Bologna’s article on the emergence of industrial history and workers’ research around the automobile industry in Italy. We converted the article into a text-file and published it here:

http://libcom.org/library/theory-history-mass-worker-italy-sergio-bologna

*** Delhi Calling: Get Involved in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel –

To abolish the global work/war house will take more than informative exercise! If you live in Delhi area, please be welcomed to take part in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel – a workers’ coordination. We distribute around 9,000 copies of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on ten days each month in various industrial areas around Delhi. You can also participate in the workers’ meeting places which have been opened in various workers’ areas. If you are interested, please get in touch. For more background on Faridabad Majdoor Talmel:

http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.com/p/fms-talmel.html

———————

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Story by Proletarian Tenant on Landlordism in Tekhand, Okhla Industrial Area -

A proletarian tenant in Tekhand, near Okhla Industrial Area
(Distributed in Hindi in FMS 275/276 May/June 2011)

In order to get drinking water in Tekhand (a ‘village’ near Okhla industrial area) you have to run a motor pump. On two floor there are about 22 rooms occupied by tenants. Since six months the landlord runs the motor pump only every second day for each floor. This could mean that you won’t have water to wash your clothes on Sunday. You are also not allowed to keep too many canisters or other kind of water containers. In this way the landlord can save one or two units for his electricity bill, may be 10 Rs here and there. It does not matter that this causes a lot of problems for the tenants. When the motor pump got stolen the landlord asked for 150 Rs extra from each room. If you refused to pay, he would have kicked you out, he says that there are a lot of tenants queuing up for rooms.

When a tenant wants to give up his or her room in Tekhand, some landlords, under this or that pretext, demand the payment of 2,000 Rs, 3,000 Rs extra. When a tenant wanted to leave his room on 10th of April 2011, the landlord said that for one and a half months of electricity and cleaning charges he should first pay 2,050 Rs. The whole thing was a complete con and the landlord went so far as to use open threats and finally he called the cops. After the word about this conflict spread amongst the tenants of the 70 rooms of the landlord and the neighbouring rooms and people started discussing, the thuggish behaviour of the landlord stopped. The tenant cleared his room in front of the landlord’s eyes… without paying him the 2,050 Rs.

*** Workers’ Reports from (Garment) Factories in Gurgaon -

NIIT Technologies Worker
(Plot 223, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
This IT company employs around six to seven thousand workers. We 33 housekeeping workers on plot 223 are not even paid the minimum wage. In March we were paid 3,850 Rs for 31 days of work, 8 hours a day. Now, since 13th of April we are supposed to work on two 12-hours shifts and they say that for 31 days of 12-hours shifts we will be paid 5,800 Rs. None of us gets ESI or PF.

Modelama Worker
(Plot 105, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
We work from 9:30 am till 8 pm, often 2 am or even 6 am the next day. There are 4,000 workers employed, manufacturing for GAP, Old Navy, AMC, DKNY etc.. The 600 to 700 female workers in the finishing department are paid 3,600 Rs to 4,000 Rs, they often have to work till 10:30 pm at night. The male workers are paid 4,200 Rs to 4,300 Rs. In the production department there are 3,000 tailors (200 female), out of which 1,000 are on piece rates and the rest on monthly wages of 4,400 Rs to 4,500 Rs. The 250 workers in the sampling department are paid 4,893 Rs. We work 100 to 150 hours overtime per month. Only the permanent workers are paid double rate, but only the first two hours of daily overtime. Even after five years of employment some workers to get the PF form. A lot of swearing from the bosses, bad drinking water, dirty toilets.

Eastern Medikit
(Plot 195 and 205, Udyog Vihar Phase I and Plot 292, Phase II)
Wages were delayed. The casual workers of the company started to go on strike on 20th of April, the company then paid the March wages on 22nd of April. The casual workers work on two 12-hours shifts, they get 18 Rs per hour overtime. The payment for February overtime was delayed, on 10th of April workers at Medikit stopped work in order to move the company to pay, on 12th of April they did.

SLV Security Worker
(Office of the company is near Ghora Farm, Sector 23)
The company employs 27,000 to 28,000 guards, they all work on two 12-hours shifts. There is no weekly day off. They pay 6,000 Rs for 12 hours, 31 days – cash in hand. If they see you dozing off they cut 300 Rs from your wages.

Grand Printers Worker
(134, Udyog Vihar Phase IV)
We work from 9 am till 8 pm on one day, from 9 am till 2 am the other. This is an industrial print-shop for cigarette packs, medical packaging and so on. They pay double rate for overtime… but the helpers are paid only 2,200 to 2,800 Rs per month and the operators 4,000 to 5,000 Rs. Only 50 out of 300 workers get ESI and PF.

Neelam International Worker
(556, Udyog Vihar Phase V)
The female workers (also the 12 to 15 year old girls) have work till late at night, sometimes till 6 am the other day. Overtime is paid single rate. The female workers who work by hand get 4,200 Rs the tailors get 5,500 Rs. None of the 500 workers get ESI or PF. Male and female workers have to share the same toilets. The factory has three floors, but only on the ground floor there are two toilets. There is always a queue. If you leave the job you have to fight hard in order to get your outstanding wages.

Jyoti Apparels Worker
(158, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
In the finishing department around 50 to 60 women workers work from 9:30 am till 9 pm, and 150 male workers work till 1 am. The monthly overtime of 150 to 200 hours is paid single rate. The tailors are sometimes paid piece rate, sometimes daily wages, sometimes monthly. None of the 450 to 500 workers get ESI or PF, may be the 50 staff get it. The general manager swears at workers. There is no canteen. The drinking water is crap. The toilets dirty. The situation in the factory next door is the same.

House of Pearl Worker
(446, Udyog Vihar Phase 5)
Around 3,000 workers produce stuff for JC Penny and Impulse. Daily shifts are from 9 am to 9 pm, often till 1 am. Only half of the workers get ESI and PF. The ‘incharges’ swear at workers a lot. Even during meal breaks you won’t find drinking water in this factory.

IMT Manesar

Kumar Printers Worker
(Plot 24, Sector 5, IMT)
In order to earn some money a worker worked 16 hours a day for 10 days in a row. He went to work even when his appetite went. He fell ill… On the 11th day he had to quit the job. The company paid him single rate for his overtime.

Crewboks Worker
(Plot 153, Sector 4, IMT)
The wages are delayed. The February wages were paid on 15th of April 2011, the March wages have not been paid (30th of April). Workers stopped working on 24th and 25th of April because December 2010 overtime had not been paid yet. The company kicked out three workers who stood in front and talked [talked to the management, talked openly]. The overtime money was then paid on 27th of April. On 25th of March 250 workers who had worked for the company since one and a half to two years were shifted to the plant on plot 12 in sector 5. Their PF numbers were changed.

Edigear Worker
(Plot 150, Sector 4, IMT)
In April the factory was swarming with representatives of the ‘buyers’. PUMA wants 25,000 pieces every week. JAMBUREE wants jeans for Australia. RSS orders uniforms. ADIDAS sent their representatives. The workers had stopped work for two days in March, because wages were delayed. The company reassured that wages will now be paid punctually on the 7th of each month. The problem in April was that because there were so many representatives running about the company did not want to be the last month wages in order to avoid the representatives seeing the large [and formally illegal] amount of overtime we work. They turned the 150 to 180 hours of overtime from March into 30 hours, documented on the pay slip. The bosses said: “Take your wages now, we will pay the remaining overtime later”. The workers said: “No way, pay both now”. They then paid both, March wages and overtime, around 17th to 21st of April. There is a huge work load due to the increased demand. Most of the 300 guys in the finishing department work from Saturday 9:30 am till Sunday 1:00 in the afternoon, that’s a 27.5 hours shift. On 27th of April the company dismissed the ‘incharge’ of the finishing department because he refused to work that long.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Unfinished Business: Further Material for Debate on Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Struggle -

Between June and October 2011 around 3,500 workers at Maruti Suzuki car plant openly confront the factory regime and its institutional allies in Manesar, in the south of Delhi. Their struggle leaped over to other automobile factories in the industrial corridor, which brought the world’s third largest automobile assembly plant in nearby Gurgaon to a halt. In the most significant workers’ struggle in India in the last two decades the young workers managed to undermine the companies’ attempts to divide them along the lines of temporary and permanent contracts. We wrote two longer texts summarising material about this important experience and tried to formulate preliminary conclusions for a necessary open debate.

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-944/

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-941/

In the following we want to give a short up-date on what has happened since the official end of the dispute in October 2011. As part of the ‘updates’ we also try to relate the dispute at Maruti Suzuki to the current ‘second-crisis-blow’, the global automobile industry has to confront since 2008. The growth in car sales in China and India is slowing down rapidly, while wage levels drop sharply in the US and it becomes clearer that they will try to close assembly plants in Europe in the near future. The re-structuring in the global car industry will still be the determining axis for the ‘capitalist re-covery’, the industry will still determine the centres and peripheries of global supply-chains and wage hierarchies for the wider social production. It will also depend on the workers’ struggles in this sector whether the working class can liberate society from the straight jacket of austerity, sales figures and assembly chains.

Jump Ahead: Up-Date on Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Dispute

More importantly than the brief update: we publish a rough translation of two articles written and distributed in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar in October and November 2011. The articles provide important details based on conversations with Maruti Suzuki workers during the dispute, in particular about the relationship between central trade unions, factory union and Maruti Suzuki workers. The articles not only ‘document’, they formulate practical suggestions of how to increase the workers’ collective power during the dispute. Friends put these suggestions to debate during conversations with workers at the occupation and protest camps and in form of a workers’ manifesto – poster. These suggestions should form part of the debate about lessons – from a perspective of workers’ self-emancipation.

Jump Ahead: Articles by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar On Maruti Struggle, October/November 2011

Last, but not least you can read six reports by automobile workers living in dormitory villages, employed in the Maruti Suzuki supply-chain. Two reports are from mainstream newspapers, but we found them interesting nevertheless. The other reports were given to and distributed by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar.

Jump Ahead: Automobile Workers’ Reports from Faridabad, Gurgaon, Manesar

——————-

* Up-Date on Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Dispute

There is an official and an unofficial aftermath of the Maruti Suzuki dispute. The official outcome seems devastating to many who have followed the struggle, while we are only able to see fragments of the unofficial results, which seem to reflect more of the collective power developed during the dispute. Unofficial results which we still have to discover together with other workers.

The official aftermaths

The official result can be summarised in the picture of golden hand-shakes. Shortly after it became known that all of the 30 suspended trade union leaders of the unrecognised MSEU have resigned from their jobs for an individual payment between 4 million rupees (USD 81,000) and 1.6 million rupees (USD 32,500), Mr RC Bhargava, chairman Maruti Suzuki was awarded with the ‘The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star’ by The Emperor of Japan for “his contribution to the strengthening of economic and bilateral relations between India and Japan”.

For all those who focussed on the ‘new leadership’ of the workers, their ‘betrayal’, their ‘sell-out’ must have been a blow. Sachdeva, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress: “These 30 workers were the most active in the formation of a union. Their loss means a new leadership needs to be developed. But, it will take workers time to put their faith in the new leaders”. It will also have been a blow to many workers, who have lost a large amount of money due to wage loss and penalty wage reductions and who see that ‘their leaders’ got out of it with a fair sum of money.

Obviously this is not a new phaenomena. After the Rico strike in October 2009 around 125 ‘leaders’ took a one-off payment and left the factory: http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-932/#fn1

Instead of lamenting about betrayal we should ask about the structural problems emerging from formal representation and organisational forms, which produce an institutionalised or personalised leadership. Unlike bourgeois forms of struggle the struggle of an industrial working class in itself does not need individual heroes, which tend to become either traitors or martyrs.

In the meantime a ‘new leadership’ has emerged to form a trade union. The character of both leadership and trade union is obscure. Friends wrote that it seems to be based much more on ‘regionalistic’ divisions within the work-force. A lawyer who represented the MSEU so far said: “I feel the new union leaders are hand-in-glove with the management. I asked them to include a provision in their union application that in the case of dispute, a settlement will only be reached with the management once it has been ratified by a two-third majority. But the union leaders refused to include any such democratic provision.” An application was filed early November, but the Haryana administration denied having received any application. The company also announced that people who underwent any disciplinary proceedings (suspensions etc.) during the time from June to October 2011 will not be able to become elected to the ‘company board’ – the ‘management’s alternative’ to union recognition.

Maruti management Mr S. Y. Siddiqui, Managing Executive Officer, told a business paper in early November “that the Department of Labour, Haryana and some management-level employees are explaining the process of setting up the union to the workers and it was likely to be completed in four months. The company has also created an email id through which any employee can communicate directly with the top management any time he/ she wants.” “My impression of the boys when I started interacting with them was that they are just kids. They have zero experience of industry and zero maturity.” This is one definite outcome, management is cautious with these young workers, they try by all means necessary to ‘understand them’ and to created new channels of ‘conflict management’. The unofficial outcomes, see below, are definitely due to this cold fear on the top.

In the meantime we should not forget that the dispute has not been resolved at Suzuki Powertrain India (SPIL). During November output levels were said to have dropped to 60 per cent – result of a go-slow protest. Focus of this protest has narrowed down to the demand of re-instatement of three trade union representatives who had been sacked during the June – October struggle. Protest meetings took place on 9th of November 2011. Subey Singh, the president of the Suzuki Powertrain Workers Union on 12th of November: “The management has been pressuring me to accept a payout many times higher than that offered to Maruti’s labour leaders. I have been offered money. They have been asking me what is it that I want (to resign). However, I have refused to accept any payout. I will not become a traitor to the labour workforce that has elected me their leader.”

The unofficial aftermath

There are two sides to the unofficial aftermath, one side relates to the wider changes the strike enforced on management and industry, the other side on how workers re-organise themselves after this experience. In the following we are only able to hint at some of the changes, which the struggle imposed; changes which did not make it into official agreements. Immediately after the dispute ended Maruti management called workers for a company meeting. “The factory manager said that it has been mentioned that a share of the profit will be distributed to the workers. The wages of the trainees and the workers hired through contractors will be increased. The wage agreement for the permanent workers runs till April 2012, so their wages will currently not be increased. You will get 16 days of paid holiday per year. There will be more company buses and their route will be extended. You can form a work committee. A worker: “For how long will this committee last?” (FMS). The wages of the apprentices were increased from 4,700 Rs to 6,200 Rs in October 2011. Apart from higher wages workers say that the middle-management and supervisors are much more respectful towards them. Also the work load seems to have eased a bit. Mr Roy, production manager in Manesar said in an interview in the The Hindu that the plant was configured to work as a ’50 second line,’ to produce a maximum of about 1,152 cars a day over two shifts of 8 hours each. This summer the company hoped to produce about 1,200 cars a day, or a 48 second line. “Prior to the troubles we were making about 1070 cars a day,” said Mr. Roy, “At present we are making about 800 cars a day.” (6th of November 2011)

The unofficial outcomes are not confined to Maruti Suzuki itself. On 24th of November motorcycle manufacturer Hero announced wage increases ‘across the board’ – menaing for their permanent employees. “For white-collar employees, the pay has been raised as much as 30 per cent, while workers at the Dharuhera plant have got a monthly increase of Rs 6,500 each. The pay increase for blue-collar workers will be spread over three years depending on their staying with Hero. “No company wants to go through what Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country’s biggest car maker, had to endure in the past few months. Hero’s wage increase will help ensure that there’s no disaffection among workers.” If we assume a monthly wage for permanent workers of around 30,000 Rs per month, than we talk about an annual wage increase of about 7 per cent – at a current annual inflation rate of around 10 per cent (which is only partly compensated for by Dearness Allowance). More importantly than the rather ‘relative’ wage increase is the fact that the wage difference between permanent and temporary workers is very likely to have increased, too. Hero has a specific history of division between permanent and temporary workers, backed by the permanent workers union, in particular at the Dharuhera plant.

Factory Occupation at Hero in Gurgaon, 2007

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no4/#fn2

Lock-out of Temporary Workers at Hero in nearby Dharuhera, 2008

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-919/#fn6

The Second Blow of Crisis for the Global Automobile Industry

The strike had a significant, though temporary impact on Maruti Suzuki’s profits and sales. On 20th of October 2011 Maruti management announced that the half-year profits (Q2) were down by 60 per cent and that the market share shrunk to 39.5 percent, from around 48 per cent. These figures must be terribly worrying for management and share-holders, but even more worrying for the gentlemen are the global long-term trends.

In India and China the impact of the crisis 2008 did not affect sales figures too much, partly because of the cheap money policy of the governments. Shrinking profit margins were still counteracted by increasing sales. Based on the growth figures all car manufacturers opened extra capacities, e.g. Maruti started to buy land for a third plant in Gujarat, claiming to set-up capacities for another 2 million vehicles per year. Shrinking profit margins cannot be explained by increasing wages of workers, wages of workers fell relatively, even in the ‘well-paid’ car industry. Maruti’s labour cost was 1.91 per cent of its net sales in the financial year 2011 compared to 3.21 per cent in financial year 2002. During this period, sales have increased by five times to Rs 37,500 crore [one crore = 10 million] from Rs 7,500 crore while labour cost moved up from Rs 227 crore to just Rs 694 crore.

The workers’ wages are already squeezed to the limit, and although they cannot account for decline of profitability, the workers’ pockets and bodies are the only source to be squeezed more. In particular after sales figures in India and China have started to follow the global downward trend. In the last year a combination of general economic slow-down, increasing interest rates to tackle inflation, rising petrol prices have put pressure on sales. In October car sales in India suffered their sharpest decline in over a decade, a fall of 24 per cent compared to the previous year. The fourth consecutive month of decline for the car industry. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) started lobbying for measures such as scrapping all vehicles manufactured before 2000 – to copy the eco-packaged subsidy model of the German government. In October Siam slashed its sales growth forecast for the current financial year to 2-4 per cent, the second cut in estimates from an initial forecast of 16 to 18 per cent. In China, the other ‘last resort of automobile capitalism’ the car market grew about 48 per cent in 2009, 34 per cent in 2010 and 4 per cent in 2011. The state subsidies ran out. While we still speak about ‘growths’ in Asia, we speak about absolute decline in Europe. In 2012 the European car market is supposed to shrink by over 5 per cent, this are about 600,000 cars, meaning the annual production of two assembly plants.

The immediate reaction by capital is to further reduce labour costs, either by reducing wages, lay offs or plant closures. Lay offs and the threat of closures is largely used to coerce workers to accept lower wages. In the USA, while Maruti workers in Manesar striked for better conditions, the UAW trade union accepted 50 per cent wage cuts for newly hired workers, a major generational division in the plants. In Italy FIAT announced in October 2011 that all collective contracts for the 70,000 FIAT workers will be terminated in 2012 and wage cuts will be cut in result. In October FIAT closed the plant Termini Imerese, a smaller factory manufacturing for Lancia. The factory is supposed to continue running under management of Chinese companies (Chery, Gonow). At the same time Maruti Suzuki announced a new joint-venture with FIAT in Italy concerning common engine manufacturing, and Maruti supplier Talbros engaged in a closer collaboration with FIAT’s supplier Magneti Marelli – see workers reports below.

Capital will only be able to drop labour costs on a global level if it ‘globalises’ wage levels in relates different wage levels directly. The car export from Asia to the global North increases, but export of car parts increased more significantly than ‘ready-made’-cars export – meaning that an actual global cooperation between automobile workers is taking shape. In the future two aspects will be decisive for working class struggle: will workers be able to turn the ‘global integration of markets and production’ into a global strike-front; and will we be able to use the togetherness and creativity brought to the fore during struggles to imagine and experiment with a different concept of mobility – beyond the car. Following text can serve for debate – against the automobile nightmare, from the perspective of an automobile worker:

http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/83/w83_auto_en.htm

In the meantime disputes continue. On 19th of November workers at Hyundai Motor India protested against increased work load on the shop floor. Representatives of the HMIEU said that the car manufacturer has hiked the work load without consulting with the union. In the assembly shop, for instance, the work done by 30 workers is expected to be done by 25. Workers at the factory in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, have boycotted the canteen facilities in protest.

* Articles by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar On Maruti Struggle, October/November 2011

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar no.280 – October 2011

Maruti Suzuki Manesar – Disciplinary Regime from Head to Toe

* A worker sitting outside the Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory during the time of protest, on 29th of August 2011: “We have to think about life beyond the routine of shifts and job, We have to think properly about it once we find the time.”

* A young workers hired through contractor at the Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon plant: “In the bumper shop the supervisors swear at you openly. The permanent workers, as well, do not respect us. It is us who are forced to do most of the work. The work load at the bumper assembly is extreme, and you won’t find any permanent workers there. There are five stations and 15-16 workers hired through contractors work on each shift. I want that in this world everyone can live, everyone can live happily.”

* A worker who got dismissed from Maruti Suzuki in 2000: “These boys are no losers. These guys from the Manesar factory have both energy and passion to fight.”

The collectivity amongst permanent and temporary workers has grown after June 2011. The sudden occupation of the factory in June was a glorious beginning. On 27th and 28th of July the collectivity of temporary and permanent workers forced the company and state to retreat: the standing together of both categories of workers forced the police, who came to arrest workers from the plant, to leave empty handed. The youthful energy softened the rigidness and became a container for laughter and happiness…

From the companies’ side the united voices of the well-dressed walking corpses say: “Indiscipline will not be tolerated!” The noisy answer of young workers, expressing the force of life: “Authoritarianism will not be endured.”

The tune and collectivity of the young workers which shook Maruti Suzuki Manesar is part of the young energy which sends ripples across the globe. The youth in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen buried state leaders who had been unmovable for decades. In Greece, France, Spain and England the undisciplined youth started to blockade the system of wage labour. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Orissa artisans, peasants and rural poor revolt against social death and murder. In one of the main financial centres on Wall Street in New York in America, every day thousands of people assemble in order to oppose the global money system.

This is why Maruti Suzuki and the state had to launch a direct attack on the workers on 29th of August [lock-out, good conduct bill]. Secret plans forged behind closed doors, concealed preparations… be it army officials, company officials or their special advisors, all these people have become trapped in their formula that two and two equals four. The fact that two and two always equals four on paper has increased the force of the bosses, but in society, in practice, two and two can sometimes be fifty, sometimes zero, sometimes even minus twenty. According to the habitual drill of the governments’ armies and their allies two and two is always four… …but in practice ,instead of delivering any solution through their many attacks around the world, the armies joint in the NATO only increase the crisis. Amongst the leaders of this world this is no one who can make sense of their situation. The planned and prepared attack of Maruti Suzuki and the state on the workers did not have the desired result…

Walls Replace the Tarps

The factory area stretches out on 600 acres. In order block the view and to demonstrate their strength the company put up tarpaulin behind the fence barb-wire fence surrounding the factory area. After the weakness of the company manifested itself during the struggle, management started in October to build a high wall around the plant. The first coal and steam based factories 200 years ago were forced to take the shape of fortresses, because at night they were attacked by scores of artisans (black-smiths, weavers etc.). Now the process of turning factories into fortresses started again. This time the bosses nightmare has come true: the workers are both inside and outside of the factory. They can see nothing but enemies, both inside and outside the fortresses walls, The security guards they hire through contractors have to work 12-hours a day, 30 days a month – more potential enemies…

In Germany people’s protest forces the government to shut down nuclear power stations. The party and government in China, armed with science, fears the youthful force of turmoil amongst peasants and workers. In Bangladesh, when workers revolt, they burn dozens of factories down.

Pieces of Paper

Maruti Suzuki, the state and the middlemen had hard work to forge the ‘agreement’ in June [ending the occupation]. But the workers treated the agreement as mere pieces of paper. The bosses, who break their own laws and rules on large scale day by day, could not stop lamenting about the ‘murder of law and order’. On 30th of September, after a long tormenting process, the bosses again signed an agreement [to end the 'lock-out]. And on 7th of October, by occupying the factory, workers again called a piece of paper by its name: a mere piece of paper. Those leaders and officers whose daily job it is to break the sacredness of words and promises now call for the defence of the ‘sacredness of the agreement’.

Sweet Force of the Youth

They run from one crisis to the next in a desperate race to manage one after the other. The key solution of the experts is: to squeezed the common people even more. The experts then cannot understand why in result the crisis depends and gives birth to new crisis, instead of solving them. In the meantime the permanent workers and trainees occupied the factory on 7th of October in protest against the companies refusal to let the workers hired through contractors back inside the factory. This time the force of the youth was not limited to Maruti Suzuki, on the 7th of October 11 factories in Manesar were occupied.

This is the time to develop a collectivity amongst permanent and temporary workers, unemployed, the rural and urban poor. This is the time to replace ‘mine-yours’ with ‘ours’. This is the time to occupy factories and to bury them. It is time to build a new society, which replaces the today of money and competition, the present of markets and opponents with a togetherness of people and the acceptance that the human species forms a part of nature.

Points for the conversation with workers who sit outside the Maruti Suzuki factory gate since 29th of August 2011

1. We cannot turn back time. Therefore it is important to focus on the now and the near future, when deciding about next steps.
2. Maruti Suzuki company and the state have launched a prepared attack on the workers in the early morning of the 29th of August. It is obvious that we have to resist this attack, therefore we should make those steps our common focus which increase our strength.
3. It is agreed fact that the permanent Maruti Suzuki workers have decided not to sign the ‘good conduct conditions’. Therefore, if this conflict remains limited to Maruti Suzuki then another painful outcome is awaiting us. In the recent past sporadic support rallies and demonstrations and short-lived strikes in single factories did not manage to change things.
4.In order to widen the collectivity against the attack of the company and government we have to take the whole of IMT Manesar as our initial place of activity.
5. As long as we treat it only as an issue of the Maruti Suzuki workers it will be naive to expect more than compassion from others. This is why we should see the main problems and worries of the workers in IMT Manesar as of common importance.
6. High work-loads, at each step humiliations, very low wages, fear due to not knowing when they will kick you out again, being forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day… this is the reality which the worker faces in anger and helplessness. This is why in a first step we can join up in collectivity to turn the question of how to put an end of the contract system and how to enforce a wage of at least 100 Rs per hour into a common issue.
7. At this time it would be easy for the Maruti workers to go in small groups of 10-20-50 and to talk to other workers employed in factories in IMT Manesar. In this way it seems viable that the 2,500 Maruti workers can join up with 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 or 100,000 other workers and undermine the attack by company and state.
8. Parallel to spreading the word in IMT Manesar it won’t be too difficult to undertake collective steps together with workers in nearby Gurgaon. On this background it should not take too much time until workers in the Delhi area (Gurgaon, Delhi, Faridabad, NOIDA, Gaziabad, Bahadurgarh, Sonipat) are able to undertake practical steps.
9. The setting up of a workers struggle committee could happen be based on a brief and swift agenda.
10. Nowadays it seems very easy to create a coordination/collectivity with students.
11. It does not seem to be in too distant future to raise the question of (or to put into question) the wage system as such… within the worldwide churning and emerging coordinations lies the possibility to find significant support and inspirations.

The impact of the Maruti Suzuki workers’ movement can be seen amongst the Munjal Showa workers on the 12th of September. Workers in this factory in sector III stopped work at 3 pm in order to protest against the employment of temporary workers for permanent work. The workers at neighbouring Satyam Auto company immediately started coming and going to and from Munjal Showa. The workers at Munjal Showa Gurgaon and Haridwar plant also stopped working. On 13th of September at 8 pm management immediately made 155 workers permanent and after having given reassurances , management had to catch their agitated breath.

On 14th of September at 4 pm workers of two shifts at at Suzuki Casting, Suzuki Powertrain and Suzuki Motorcycles stopped work, started demonstrations inside the plants, shouted slogans. The production stopped and the gathered workers inside the factories demanded that the Maruti Suzuki Manesar workers should be taken back and the good conduct bond should be withdrawn.

On the 15th of September the production in these three factories was still halted and very animated workers still inside the plants. In front of the Maruti Suzuki factory young workers, laughing and making jokes. They marched to the occupied Powertrain factory, shouted slogans in support, gave speeches, sung songs, distributed flyers. Beautiful words, interesting discussions. The drivers of the sale and dispatch department stopped working in the C-shift. On 15th of September the A and B-shift of he 350 drivers hired through contractor gathered in front of the SND gate of Maruti Suzuki, even in the heavy rain, taking cover under trees and bushes.

“Hoo!-Hoo!-Hoo!” – this growing noise from the workers means that the media guys gave arrived. Once the news made the round that people form the media have arrived the workers sitting in front of the Maruti factory started to shout rounds of “Hoo!” noises. During the course of the struggle childhood illusions have evaporated. “When I was in the 11th class I still believed in what The Times of India was saying… The fact that this newspaper printed the whole speeches made by the Maruti Suzuki chairman has opened our eyes.”

On 16th of September production was made to be resumed at Suzuki Casting, Engine and Motorcycles. The company was willing to enter negotiations, but put the condition to it that work should first resume at the three factories. The middlemen were compliant. The union rally was cancelled. Obviously, having witnessed the general atmosphere even the traditional steps (like rallies) have scared the state, company and middlemen several times.

In the night of the 18th of December negotiations between labour department, company and workers took place. There was no scope for an agreement. Ending unsuccessful, the police arrested three workers right from the venue of negotiations. The hope of the bosses was that in reaction the workers would cause trouble, which would have given more chances for in the state and companies’ plan to succeed.

Despite this instigation the Maruti Suzuki workers did not run riot. The kept calm. Steps were undertaken to bail out the arrested workmates. They were released on the 19th instead of the 20th of September.

The company made it an exercise to use the mobile phone, which was given to workers for 10 million manufactured Suzuki cars, as a management tool against the workers. While the three workers were in jail, the company phoned up the trainees. “Why don’t you go inside? We had put up a notice saying that you the trainees don’t return to work by 19th of September you can see yourselves as fired. You have been fired, but nevertheless, now you still can come back to work.”

Maruti sent 4 to 6 letters to the home of each employee. They sent text-messages to their phones. On 20th of September: “Dear employee”, on 21st of September: “Dear friend of the Maruti family”, then “Dear fellow workmen”. They sent a help-line number, a link where workers could watch a video about the ‘true situation’. They sent quotations from Vivekanand and Napoleon. The company send managers to the villages and homes of workers (in order to speak to their families). When workers sitting in front of the factory heard from their families about it they said: “Don’t ask him questions. Keep cool and give the gentlemen food and drink and say farewell to him with respect.”

The company said (during the lock-out / protest-camp): Today we have produced 670 cars. A manager then said: On the day we manage to manufacture 1,000 cars you will all be fired.

The company assembled some village chiefs of the villages Aliyar, Dhana, Baas, Mangrola against the workers: “Go inside the factory, otherwise leave this area.” In the night some of the villagers drove around in cars, drunk. Some increased the room rents of workers. They threaten the workers at night, speak with soft voices the next day and greet the Maruti Suzuki workers in villages a bit further away from the scene.

The company plan gut stuck, the workers obstructed it. The company changed its tactics. The middlemen were again been activated. In the meantime the workers had realised that sitting in front of the gate and merely hearing talks about support and help wouldn’t move things forward. So on 23rd of September the factory union leader of the Gurgaon plant arrived with three bus loads full of workers. Union leaders of the three other Suzuki Group factories also arrived. Speeches and discussions. Around 250 permanent workers of the Maruti Manesar factory gave their signature to an agreement saying that the Gurgaon factory leader should take part in negotiations on their behalf.

After it seemed that a frontal attack on the workers would turn out unsuccessful, state, company and middlemen started to act from a new angle. A long process of ‘explaining-advising’ took place. A lot of phoney reassurances were dished out as usual, but some genuine reassurances were given by young workers from other factories in IMT Manesar. On the 30th of September, late at night, an agreement was signed.

Conditions of the Agreement

1. Both sides accept that the termination of those 15 workers who were dismissed by management between 29th of August 2011 and 15th of September will be revoked and turned into a suspension. But they will undergo an independent investigation according to the legal procedures and future steps will be decided based on the outcome. Whatever is the outcome, both sides will accept it.
2. Both sides also accept that those 18 trainees who had been dismissed between 29th of August to 30th of August will be reinstated from 1st of October onwards.
3. The 29 workers who had been suspended between 1st of July and 17th of September 2011 will remain suspended. A charge sheet will be issued against them and an independent investigation will take place. Both sides will accept the outcome of the investigation.
4. Both sides accept that from 29th of August the ‘no work, no pay’-rule applies and that as penalty one day wage extra will be cut from wages per one day of no work.
5. Both sides agree that workers will take a day off tomorrow, 1st of October, and resume work on 3rd of October after having signed the good conduct bond as wished by management. The day off on 1st of October will be compensated for in the near future by working during a bank holiday (day off).
6. Both sides accept that workers will keep discipline, will not obstruct production neither collectively nor individually. The management promises not to act against workers scornfully.
7. Both sides agree that in case of future disputes both sides will try to solve it by conversation amongst each other.
8. Both sides will not abuse the fundamental rights of the other and based on this agreement they will not hold scornful feelings for the other, but act in full loyalty.
9. After the agreement both sides accept that all disputes between the parties have been solved.

On the 3rd of October permanent workers and trainees went inside the factory. Around 1,200 workers hired through contractors where not let inside the plant. On 4th and 5th of October these workers were still refused entry. The anger grew. People who were on the side of the company irritated (bullied) and agitated these workers. The company had given a clear order to the contractors not to let these workers return to work at the Maruti factory.The company saw the growing collectivity amongst permanent and temporary workers as their main source of trouble. Out of anger around 100 temporary workers left, but the rest kept on putting pressure on the permanent workers. The temporary workers put pressure on the 44 suspended workers to take things forward.

After Dusshera (festival), at 10 am in the morning of the 7th of October the workers hired through contractor arrived at the factory gate. Thugs turned up to threaten them. A suspended worker, who was also a member of the factory committee, interrupted the bouncer and gave him something to chew on by saying that the workers hired through contractors had also signed the agreement – the bouncer then dragged his tail and left. The workers of other IMT factories who had reassured the workers offered support. Workers gathered at the factory and at 1 pm it was decided that at 4 pm, when both B and C shift are inside the factory, workers would stop working and occupy the factory.

On 7th of October at 4 pm the permanent workers occupied the factory, demanding to take back the workers hired through contractors. At Suzuki Engine, Suzuki casting, Suzuki Motorcycle, Satyam Auto, Bajaj Motor, Endurance, Hi-Lax, Lumax DK and other factories workers stopped work, started demonstrations inside the plant, occupied it and demanded the taking back of the temp workers at Maruti. The state sent more than 200 police men into the Maruti plant. They stayed established themselves there.

On the 8th of October the occupations at the four Suzuki factories (not the Gurgaon plant) were kept up. The company had closed the canteen, therefore the workers themselves organised the food. Under pressure the workers at the other factories had restarted work. The other four factories maintained the protest for the 44 suspended and the workers hired through contractor.

On this background remember the poster which was put up at the Maruti Suzuki gate on 30th of September…

About how to increase the power of and with the Maruti Suzuki Manesar Workers

*Company and state have executed a pre-planned and prepared attack on the workers on 29th of August.

* The workers’ collectivity has resisted this attack successfully for one month now. Their mutual help and care provides strength for the workers.

* The collectivity amongst permanent workers, trainees, apprentices, workers hired through contractors has put a halt to Maruti Suzuki management and the state’s attack. It has pushed the attackers back.

* How can workers increase their strength? This has become an important question.

* For the Maruti Suzuki workers and the workers in IMT manesar to join up seems like an easy and simple first step.

* In order to come closer and to extend support and mutual care it seems necessary to raise common questions.

* The very low wages and the fact that temporary workers are employed for permanent work and similar issues seem to provide a common ground. If we look at the price increases wages in IMT should be at least 800 Rs for an 8-hours day. On this bases and the goal to put a stop on the contract system the Maruti Suzuki workers can link up with workers in hundreds of factories in Manesar.

* There is time. And there is young energy. Going out in groups of 5 to 10 the Maruti Suzuki workers can quickly reach other workers in Sector 8,7,6,5,4,3 and talk to them about the 800 Rs for 8 hours question, the question of putting an end to contract system.

* Turn the Maruti Suzuki issue into an IMT Manesar issue – this can push back the attack.

———-

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar no.281 – November 2011

Maruti Suzuki Diary

* On the 7th of October at 4 pm eleven workers in IMT Manesar occupied eleven factories. The issue has spread beyond Maruti Suzuki, following its essential character, which is not confined to one company. The speed with which is spread puts in front of us the potential and reality of the turmoil in thousands of factories.

* Under the pressure of the state, companies and middlemen on 8th of October the occupations were reduced to the four plants of the Suzuki group. The Maruti factory in Gurgaon was not occupied, but the middlemen were unsuccessful to make workers go back to work at Suzuki Powertrain, castings and Motorcycle. These workers had made the experience of how middlemen call for and call off strikes on 14th to 16th of September.

* At Maruti Suzuki Manesar the issues of taking back the 44 suspended permanent and allowing the 1,200 to 1,400 workers hired through contractors to re-enter production became one. At Suzuki Powertrain and Motorcycles permanents and workers hired through contractor joint together and turned the issue into a common issue of the four plants.

* The central government was entangled and preoccupied with the regional elections in Hisar and therefore not able to intervene. The general atmosphere during the period of the four factory occupations between the 7th and the 13th of October was one of commonality and easiness. The company did not have any clue how to solve the issue. The bosses did not know what these workers wanted.

* Conversation amongst workers in one factory: “Previously one would leave the factory during strike, now we stay inside. To leave the factory means to hand it over to the company and gives them more scope to act. To stay inside means to keep the control over the factory.” But… but to be kept outside the factory or to stay outside of the factory gives us the immediate chance to create links with workers of other factories and to join up. Yes, to only sit in front of the gate and blow hot air means to have become trapped.

* The problem which the Maruti Suzuki workers face is the problem of all of us and in October the solution was amongst the workers in IMT Manesar coming together and building a big damn by helping and supporting each other. The position that the power of the workers in the four factories alone was sufficient was dwindling. .

* The propaganda churned out by radio-TV-newspapers did not have any effects: Maruti will close down the plant and go to Gujarat, two hundred thousand jobs will be lost here, the strike causes huge losses for the tax revenue of the Haryana and central government, we have to accept factories as means of provision, they are a way out after the collapse of the workshops, the wages of the Maruti workers are high and they just think about themselves… all this talk was pushed into the background by the questions of ‘how to survive’ and ‘how to live a good life’ which emerged during the struggle.

* The Maruti Suzuki workers listened to everyone, but acted according to what they thought right – this is why they did not end up in the fist of the middlemen. The unions set up a committee to support the strike, composed by seven members. Amongst them the leaders who came to give speeches during the general assembly on 13th of October in front of Maruti Suzuki. The elections in Hisar were on the 13th of October and the Haryana-Punjab high court had ordered to leave the factory on the 13th of October… the union leaders said that if the government uses force, we will take action all over IMT manesar, all over Haryana, all over India.

* On the night of the 13th the police took the communal kitchen from the Powertrain gate. In Aliyar village a new kitchen to supply workers with food was set up. Huge numbers of police gathered at Manesar police station. In front of the office of the district administration a long queue of empty Haryana Roadways buses formed. On the 14th the Gurgaon DC went inside the factory and conveyed the high court order to the workers, told them to leave the factory and to enter into negotiations.

* The union committee phone the union leaders and told them to call for strike and to support the Maruti Suzuki workers. The leaders said that they will call for a meeting at noon that day. Work was not interrupted in any factory and none of the small and big leaders turned up at the Maruti factory. The police stopped the food supply to the workers inside. The factory committee said that it was ready to leave the factory by 7:30 pm. At 8 pm a leader arrived at the factory and told the committee to tell the workers to leave the plant. The leader spoke to the workers inside by using a mic. There was resistance. In the end the workers left the factory.

* On the 15th of October a huge police force gathered inside and outside the Suzuki Powertrain factory – according to a correspondent of a Punjab newspaper about 4,000 cops. The 2,000 workers refused to leave the factory. A demonstration of 2,000 workers arrived from the Maruti Suzuki plant and sat down in front of the Powertrain factory. The tension rose. Some middlemen turned up. The powertrain workers left the plant. A joint demonstration went back to the Maruti Suzuki gate.

* On the 17th of October a rally-demonstration-handing over of a memorandum took place in Gurgaon, called for by the unions. Two hours of speeches, but no action plan was announced. Tripartite negotiations started at the Huda guest house. Maruti published again figures after figures about how many cars they were able to produce. Some workers went back inside the factory to resume work.

* On 19th of October three Powertrain workers who took part in the tripartite negotiations were separated from the negotiations, seated in a separate room and their mobile phones were taken away. On the 19th of October Maruti Suzuki signed the agreement. The Powertrain agreement was signed on the 21st of October – workers who took part in the negotiations were not allowed to leave the site of negotiations during all that time. They did not allow anyone to support them (with advice), when they went smoking or to the toilet, policemen were always with them. It is said that it was an oder by the government that until there is an agreement no worker should be allowed to leave. Accoring to clause 6 of the Suzuki production was supposed to be resumed by B-shift on the 20th of October… but production was not resumed by early evening on the 21st of October…

The Agreement

1. Both sides agree that out of the 44 employees who were suspended according to the agreement on 30th of September 2011, 22 employees will be subjected to thorough investigation. The investigation should take place within the next ten days. Whatever the investigation will come up with will be accepted by the employees. If the investigations turns out to be in disadvantage to any employee, the employees agree to abstain from any protests, such as tool-down strike, sit-in strike, protest rallies and so on. The remaining 25 employees will undergo an initial investigation and according to decision, will return to their work on 20th of October 2011. Those employees who had been suspended earlier (case 807222) will undergo a thorough investigation. If the decision turns out as disadvantageous for the employees, no employee will resort to any protest, such as tool-down strike, sit-in strike and so on. The remaining 9 employees will undergo an initial investigation and according to outcome will return on the 20th of October 2011.

3. Both sides agree that from the 7th of October onwards the rule ‘no work no pay’ applies and that as penalty one day’s wage per day of strike will be reduced from the salary.

6. Both sides agree that production resumes immediately with the B-shift on 20th of October 2011.

10. From 30th of September onwards the company bus services for employees will be re-installed.

11. Both sides agree that the management of the company will request the contractors to accept the conditions which had been given for the contract workers on 29th of August 2011.

* On the evening of the 21st of October the Maruti Suzuki workers were happy, they were shouting slogans. They believed that the 30 suspended will return within the next 10 days. But the union president was nervous, words were spread. People who haven’t read the agreement, said what they had heard about it. When the union general secretary did not appear on the platform, the workers put up pressure and let him be called to speak. In the speeches of the leaders there was no force, the speakers to not shout any slogans or encouraged workers to do so.

* On the 22nd of October the A-shift went inside the factory, but neither in the morning nor the evening any of the committee members turned up. Why did they not turn up? People from the media turned up.

* On the 22nd of October the factory manager called for a meeting. Small groups of more silent workers were called from each department. The factory manager put on a very serious face. He said: “Why are you guys down? Come on, be happy.” A worker: “Even when we are angry, we are still happy.” The factory manager said that it has been mentioned that a share of the profit will be distributed to the workers. The wages of the trainees and the workers hired through contractors will be increased. The wage agreement for the permanent workers runs till April 2012, so their wages will currently not be increased. You will get 16 days of paid holiday per year. There will be more company buses and their route will be extended. You can form a work committee. A worker: “For how long will this committee last?”

* On the 23rd of October it has reached the ears of all workers that something was wrong. The union president and general secretary had secretly resigned from their job. The union president had disappeared after announcing the agreement. When called the general secretary only spoke hot air. The factory union committee has been made defunct. News make the round that 5, 10, 15 of the suspended have resigned from their jobs.

* In the factory none of the workers speak about the agreement – those who made the agreement have nothing to do with us anymore. There are preoccupations, but there is no fear. The fear had been expelled. People ask themselves what could be done now? Now that neither the management nor the workers rule in the factory. On Sunday, 24th of October workers talked about the fact that the current payslip shows that 10 Rs has been deducted as contributions for the old union. The company became anxious and stopped handing out the payslips. They said that they will issue new ones, that the 10 Rs will not be deducted, that the new ones will be out by 30th of October.

* The situation that has emerged has forced Maruti Suzuki to take back the 1,200 temporary workers. Given that the issue has become reduced to the Suzuki factories the workers there depend more and more on support and cooperation of other workers.

* The bosses are not able to understand social processes. This is why they make individuals or small groups responsible for a situation and use all force to deal with them. This is why state and company feel relieved after Maruti Suzuki has dealt with the 30 leaders at their plant and the 3 leaders at Powertrain. Whereas, during the last five months these workers have been brought into a position where they were able to play an important role to keep the workers under control. It is the twist of these times that the government and company in their agitated state have thrown away their well suited tools by making these workers resign from their jobs.

Today, from a new angle, and at a new level, life has surfaced again.

* Automobile Workers’ Reports from Faridabad, Gurgaon, Manesar

Following six reports concerning workers in the local automobile industry. The first two are from mainstream newspapers, the following four were told to Faridabad Majdoor Samachar.

Living Conditions in Caterpuri

“Roughly 70 per cent of the residents of Carterpuri-named after the former US president Jimmy Carter, who came calling in 1978-work in Maruti Suzuki and other factories. “We hardly go to the malls. It makes us feel low, it’s frustrating,” says 24-year-old Dharminder Singh, a contract worker at Maruti and a resident of Carterpuri. “When you earn Rs. 6,700 a month, you cannot eat out, visit malls and, of course, feel on a par with others.” There’s a story behind the name. It used to be called Daulatpur Nasirabad before the 39th president of the US came calling in 1978. Jimmy Carter was looking for the area in which his mother Lillian had worked as a nursing volunteer in the 1960s. A name change seemed propitious.”We thought the renaming of the village will change our fortunes but Gurgaon became a city and we stayed where we were,” says Attar Singh, a resident of Carterpuri, now in his late 60s. Carterpuri is a low-lying area that gets flooded with sewage from the private colonies around it. Flies and an overpowering stench of open drains hangs in the air. Ironically, while part of Maruti’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives involve welfare programmes in and around areas close to its plants, Carterpuri has never figured in them. “We have adopted four-five villages in Manesar where we try to improve the living conditions,” says a company spokesperson. “Our workers may be living there as the village (Carterpuri) is in the vicinity of our plant but living conditions in that village never came to our notice.” “The company considers the local community an important stakeholder.”
We find this ‘local community’ concern of Maruti particularly ironic given that one of the forces used by management against the strikers was ‘the local community’ – bought by Maruti money – in form of landlords, panchayats and thugs.

Working Conditions at Maruti

“When I first began working for Maruti, assembly lines used to run right through my dreams,” said a worker with a laugh, “These days I suppose I’m so tired that I don’t get dreams anymore.”
In Manesar, Maruti produces about 180 variants of three basic models. When a car rolls in, the worker looks at a large matrix pasted on the vehicle that indicates if the car is a left or right hand drive, powered by petrol, diesel or compressed natural gas engines intended for the domestic, European or general export market. Depending on his work station the worker chooses from 32 different upholstered seats, 90 tyre and wheel assemblies, and innumerable kinds of wire-harnesses, air conditioning tubes, steering wheels, dashboard trims, gearboxes, switches, locks, and door trims, in an average time of 50 seconds per car. For parts like air conditioning tubes, the worker stands between a set of parts racks. As a particular car variant rolls in, a light above the corresponding parts rack blinks with increasing urgency as the worker runs to it, grabs a part and pulls a cord to acknowledge he has chosen the right part. He then steps onto the conveyor belt, fits the part and rushes back to match the next car to the next blinking parts rack before an alarm rings. If the line halts, signboards across the shop floor light up – flashing the number of the workstation where the line has stopped and the duration of the stoppage. Another board displays the total time ‘lost’ during the shift; a scrolling ticker lists the production targets at a given time of the day, the actual cars produced and the variance. “For every fault, the feedback is recorded and the worker has to sign against it… it goes into his record,” said a worker, speaking on condition of anonymity as every Maruti worker must sign ‘Standing Orders’ that, among 100 other conditions, bar them from slowing down work, singing, gossiping, spreading rumours and making derogatory statements against the company and management. The work record is examined during yearly appraisals. (Gone in 50 seconds, Aman Sethi, The Hindu)

Omax Auto Worker
(Plot 6, Sector III, IMT Manesar)
There are two 10.5 hours shifts, 200 permanent worker and 1,200 to 1,300 workers hired through six different contractors. They manufacture motorcycle parts for Honda, hero Honda, Suzuki and Minda. Per month workers work 60 to 84 hours of overtime, the payment is less than single rate, around 16 to 20 Rs per hour. Of the 800 newly hired workers each month 10 to 15 hours overtime get embezzled. The helpers are paid 4,214 Rs. From these wages contributions for ESI and PF are cut, but only some workers receive the PF money when leaving the job. The highest pressure is on the welding workers, the air pollution is unbearable.

QH Talbros Worker
(Plot 51, Sector III, IMT Manesar)
In the factory 100 permanent workers, 50 casuals and 300 workers hired through contractors produce steering rods for Maruti Suzuki, Tata, Escorts, Sona Steering and for export. The permanent workers work on 8 hours shifts, the rest of the work-force on two 12-hours shifts. The permanents get double rate for overtime, the rest single rate. After paying initially 1,500 Rs each and then 100 Rs monthly, the permanent workers joined a union about a year ago. Many other workers initially also gave 200 Rs for the union. At the beginning of May management suspended one worker accusing him of stirring up trouble. After coming back from leave the company refused to take back four workers hired through contractor – they were accused of having taken part in hoisting the union flag. The company has hired 60 to 70 trainees for two years, after their training they were supposed to be made permanent – but so far out of 18 trainees who passed the training 4 were dismissed. In order to put up resistance against all this, the INTUC union gave a strike notive to management for the 5th of May. Since the 20th of May all workers sit outside of the factory in protest. On the 23rd of May nothing came out of the negotiations between management and union at the labour department.

Talbros Automotive Components and Magneti Marelli signed agreements on November 16th 2011, for formation of a 50:50 joint venture to manufacture suspension systems and modules. The JV will start its operations in Faridabad, Haryana, and will manufacture various components including control arms, knuckles, and front axlesand rear axles for automobile applications. Mr Eugenio Razelli CEO of Magneti Marelli stated that “The JV agreement with Talbros allows us to further extend our presence and footprint in India, adding a business area the suspension systems in which we have consolidated know-how and long-time industrial experience. We applied once again our strategy of partnering with Indian leading companies, that up to now has brought good result in our process of localization in the country and that enables us to add value to local clients and major transnational carmakers in the country.”

http://www.talbrosit.com/comp_QH.htm

Clutch Auto Worker
(12/4 Mathura Road, Faridabad)
For their April wages management paid the permanent workers 1,800 Rs less than usual. As an act of resistance the permanent workers refused to take the wages on 12th of May. The company claims that according to the 2006 agreement between trade union and management the company can cut wages if productivity targets are not met. This is a trap… There is talk about the company opening a new factory in Rewari and so the management wants the workers to leave the job ‘on their own accord’.

Premium Moulding and Pressing Worker
(185 Udyog Vihar, Phase I, Gurgaon)
In this factory 100 permanent workers and 200 temporary workers are employed on two 12-hours shifts. They manufacture steering wheels, horns, dumpers, radiator fans for Maruti Suzuki, Tata, Tata Nano, Mahindra, Ford, Punjab Tractor. The workers hired through contractors are paid only 3,500 Rs and only 6 Rs per hour of overtime. The wages are paid delayed. The drinking water in the plant is bad.

*** Delayed Notes on Harsoria Healthcare Workers’ Strike in Gurgaon -

We already published a short note and call for solidarity in a previous newsletter.

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-938/#fn4

The following is a more detailed report published and distributed in Hindi in Faridabad majdoor Samachar.

Harsoria Healthcare Workers’ Strike

(Plot 110, Udyog Vihar Phase IV, Gurgaon)
There are about 650 to 700 workers in our factory, we work on two 12-hours shifts, we manufacture IV’s and medical cannula. Due to extreme work loads the hands are always pricked by the needles we manufacture, we are told to tape our hands and continue working, the machines are not supposed to stand still. In the factories there are cameras everywhere. Wages are paid late. We receive a lot of swearing from the managers.

In order to find some relieve we joint a union in September – October 2010. The permanent workers paid 2,000 Rs each contribution, the casual workers and those hired through contractor paid 1,000 Rs each. In this way the union gathered more than 450,000 Rs.

The company turned the casual workers into workers hired through contractor, which made their situation worse. Because he objected this, the company suspended the union president on 11th of December 2010. In resistance the production output suffered, people worked slow. The company sacked individual workers, bit by bit, and put two guys with rifles at the gate. But they stopped to swear at us and the wages were not delayed anymore.

In March 2011 the company and the union had to settled their three year agreement. In consequence the workers found a little relieve… but they had hardly time to catch their breath when the company provoked the workers on 8th of April. A guy from the middle-management [staff] told workers that the union president in the factory had sold out. The union president hit the guy. Trouble. The company suspended the president and another worker.

In response the workers on night-shift stopped working on the very same day. When the management refused entry to the morning shift, the workers on night-shift stayed inside the factory. There is no canteen in the plant, so the 300 to 350 workers inside got their food passed over the fence by their co-workers. Inside and outside the factory the workers kept the noise up for 72 hours. The legal order arrived: “Get out of the plant!”. After the union told them the workers left the factory after 72 hours.

The company suspended first 5 more workers, then another 7 and finally another 4 workers. The workers staged a protest sit-in in a nearby park. Some dates for meetings with the labour department circulated. The management said that everyone apart from 7 suspended can go inside and work. On the 25th of April negotiations started between company and union in the office of the labour deputy. Around 150 workers waited for the settlement in front of the office. At 6 pm two lorries arrived – accompanied by the police – and started loading finished goods from the factory. The workers who were sitting in the nearby park came running and arrived at the gate. The police started an attack with their batons. The workers sat down on the road. The union leader arrived. He told the workers to clear the street and sit down in the park again. “The union will have a meeting and take action”.

On the 26th of April 300 workers arrived and waited for a decision from 10 am onwards. At 2 pm around 40 union leaders arrived. They gave speeches. They said that once a decision is made it has to be followed. On the 27th of April, company and union came to an agreement. At 2:30 pm a top union leader announced the result: Apart from the 7 suspended, all the other workers should go inside and work. The 250 workers who were present became very angry. The top union leader was driven away while he was still trying to continue with his speech. Another big union guy made another attempt, but was also sworn at by the workers and finally chased away. The factory union leaders and the workers organised a separate meeting. We got trapped – it became absolutely clear that we had been trapped. Leaving the 7 suspended outside the rest of the workers entered the plant on 28th of April.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies

*** The “Spiritual”-Industrial Complex: Involvement of Brahmakumaris and Radha Soami Panth in Industrial Management in Gurgaon -

To cooperate with hundreds of other workers (and supervisors, middle-managers) under the conditions of a modern autombile regime requires as much emotional, affective, intellectual labour as manual skills. During times of discontent this effort of affective labour, often invisible in daily life, turns into collective anger. All of a sudden management has to rediscover the ‘human dimension’ of the assembly line workers. They engage in human resource studies, participatory grievance workshops in order to win back the ‘mind,hearts (and muscles) of their workers. The following quote from a Maruti advisor after the strikes and occupations is a good example of how the representatives of capital address the contradictions their system brings forth:

“For lasting cooperation, Maruti needs to train its line managers not just in grievance redressal, but in caring for and communicating with each worker from their heart so as to develop among them a sense of ownership. That would help strengthen a workplace culture that restores the workers’ pride and dignity. This task cannot be just episodic and left to the HR department alone. The company needs to build a psychological connect with each employee, and internalise a great deal of passion in its employee care programme so as to move away from any symbolism or neglect. It must have a comprehensive communication and human relations agenda touching most aspects of the workers’ lives and their families so as to bring the alienated workers back into the mainstream and on a path of commonality of objectives as a way of life. However, nothing can replace the mantra of ‘communicate, communicate and communicate’.”
(www.business-standard.com/india/news/lessonsmaruti/454670)

All of a sudden the ‘human appendixes of the machinery’, the ‘global assembly line coolies’ have a mind and heart to care about – and obviously a soul. After the lockout at Denso in 2010, management invited the permanent workers to a week at the Brahmakumaris resort near Manesar.

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-924/#fn5

Similarly Maruti Suzuki engaged Brahmakumaris ‘scientological’ advisors to take care of industrial relations after the recent lockout in summer 2011. But as you can read below, the involvement of religious sects in industrial management is not only confined to ‘post-dispute healing’, but comprises ‘pre-work education’ of manual workers.

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter (HMSI) Worker
(Plot 1/2, Sector III, IMT Manesar)
Since four years one of the managers maintains relations with the Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI), which is part of the Radha Soami Panth, a religious sect. The institute collaborates, amongst others, with the University of Maryland, College Park, in the USA. The manager hires (through contractors) young skilled workers from the 76 branches of the institute, who are then employed in the HMSI factory. In many districts, next to the centres of the Radha Soami Satsang there are DEI run educational institutes, which train wiring operatives and motor mechanics for four-wheelers. After the one year course they are supplied Honda, Mahindra, Tata etc.. According to the rule of ‘use and throw’, Honda uses these workers for three or four years and then kicks them out.

http://www.dei.ac.in/ssi/Home.htm

(Faridabad Majdoor Samachar – June 2011)

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** Suggested Reading: Contributions to the Global Overthrow -

The global and historical character of the current crisis forces us to coordinate both debate and practice ‘for workers self-emancipation’ on an international scale. Following texts are selective, but we think that they can stand as examples for ‘general theses’, ‘concrete analysis’ and ‘historical debate’ of class struggle and revolutionary movement.

Leaflet by InsurgentNotes on the Occupy Movement in the USA:

http://insurgentnotes.com/2011/11/the-next-step-for-ows/

New Magazine from the US focusing on the Proletarian Tendencies within the Occupy Movement:

http://viewpointmag.com/

Article from Wildcat on Rural Class Relations in Indonesia:

http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/e_w90_indonesien.html

Article from Wildcat on Migrant Agricultural Workers Strike in Southern Italy:

http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/91/e_w91_nardo.html

*** GurgaonWorkersHistory: Voices from the Local Working Class History -

Sangharshrat Mehantkash no.3, 2011

The Workers Movement in the Industrial Area of Dharuhera – by Bhoop Singh

In 1977 Dharuhera was declared an industrial area by the government of Haryana. At that time Banarsi Das Gupta was prime minister. For the industrial area the government alloted thousands of acres. At that time there were already some production units situated in Dharuhera, for example Sehgal Paper, which claimed to produce ‘carbonless paper’ in India. Other units were of Suri Paper, Haryana Detergent, Multitech, Dharuhera Chemicals and East India Synthetics. At around 1981 a huge plant with the name Pashupati Spinning and Weaving. To that date the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC) did not exist yet, so these industrial areas were developed by Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA).

With the time some of the famous industries like Sehgal Papers closed – these companies had been given cheap land by the government, which they still owned. But the name of Seghal Papers turned Dharuhera into a landmark on the map of India. In the 1980s the mentioned companies ran well – during that time the factory bosses linked up with local thugs, this is why during this period no worker in no company was able to raise their voice for their demands. Up to 1984 there was no movement in this industrial region.

Dharuhera’s first workers’ movement

The first movement was kicked off by the East India workers in June 1984. The workers were fully organised but given the lack of a proper leadership and future perspective the company bosses were a able to suppress them with the help of local leaders, one of them a member of the national cabinet, and state machinery. At the time Choudary Bhajanlal was chief minister of Haryana. His government was completely immersed in corruption. In the whole of the nation the corruption of Bhajanlal was the word of the day. Up to June 1986, as long as Bhajanlal was in government, the exploitation of workers was the most blatant. In Haryana the condition of the Congress government had become merciless. The government ministers didn’t even let the village meetings being taken place. When a minister who had a different post in the Haryana cabinet entered the village meeting of the village Bharouda (Rohtak), he was chased away together with his staff. In consequence, the state ministers ordered to ban the village meetings and stopped visiting the villages [of the state Haryana]. As a result Indira Gandhi central government revoked Bhajanlal from his position and chief minister and made him a minister in the central government and installed Bansilal as chief of state.

Radhu Yadav’s Unemployed Army

In 1985 Radhu Yadav organised the Unemployed Army [Berojgar Sena]. This organisation called for a huge rally during the same year, calling people in the area reaching from Rewari to Dharuhera. When they heard this all the industrialists and their middle-men became alarmed. They started preaching that Radhu would loot and burn the entire region. It was the plan to stop the demonstration at the Sahbi river. The leading figures behind this conspiracy were members of a Dharuhera based ziledar [superintendent] family. Not by chance these people were agents of the Pashupati Mill. As little by chance as the fact that it was well known that the exploitation was worst in the Pashupati Mill – this company paid the most meagre wages in Haryana. The owner Jain was in cahoots with the local council leaders. The Unemployed Army arrived at the planned day in Dharuhera and held an enormous mass meeting – in this way the demonstration was successful and the local conspiracy did not manage to obstruct. On that day the nephew of Lilu Kutbi – who was part of the industrialists middlemen – received a beating. He had tried to obstruct the rally in Dharuhera.

Hero Honda Group establishes industrial units

In 1985 Hero Honda opened its motorcycle plant in Dharuhera. The partts supplying auxiliaries also opened factories, such as Omax Auto, Rico Auto or KJ Auto. For one or two years exploitation was going on in these plants. No workers raised his voice. In October 1986 the workers at Omax Auto started a mobilisation. For their interested they set up a union, the “Omax Auto Workers Union”, whose presidents were comrade Surat Singh and Sachiv Raj Singh. The workers presented their demands to management and in order to enforce them they went on strike. After a few days of strike and after the SDM in Revari had given his signature the strike was ended. This was an organised movement and in this way workers’ unions started here. After a few days the Omax Auto workers again struck over a certain issue. The entire workforce set up a tent in front of the company gate and stopped production. This continued for some days when during night the police arrived, they loaded the workers into buses and threw them into Mehandrgarh jail, I can remember very well when we went to SDM court in Rewari in order to bail them out the police started beating the hand-cuffed workers. Some of them got injured. I opposed this together with some lawyers. All this reminded me of the atrocities and abuse of the English which they inflicted upon Lala Lajpat Rai. This type of abuse was contemptible in a free India. But the workers here are still not fully organised, this is why they can still be abused. After a few days of back-and-forth the good son of Choudhray Bansilal intervened, he made the company take the Omax workers back on duty and a union under the name of “Dharihera Kamgar Union” was registered. The leadership was with CITU. By this time the workers in Dharuhera were awakened. The workers at KJ Auto also set up a union. (To be continued)

Wildcat Strikes, Factory Occupations and Protest Camps

Since June 2011 around 3,500 workers at Maruti Suzuki car plant openly confront the factory regime and its institutional allies in Manesar, in the south of Delhi. [1] Their struggle leaped over to other automobile factories in the industrial corridor, which brought the world’s third largest automobile assembly plant in nearby Gurgaon to a halt. While in the US automobile workers have to confront the introduction of a union sanctioned “Two Tier”-wage system, which enforces a dramatic (global) wage drop and generational division, the Maruti Suzuki workers refuse the status as cheap labour.

In the most significant workers’ struggle in India in the last two decades the young workers managed to undermine the companies’ attempts to divide them along the lines of temporary and permanent contracts. The struggle attacked the core of the Indian development model and puts it into question: integration into global markets and production structures on the highest technological level combined with harshest casualisation of the workforce. While waves of protest against the impacts of the crisis rock the globe, their occupations and protest camps are an angry exclamation that this system is in crisis even when it is ‘booming’. In its potential their struggle is a link in the chain between the strike waves at Honda in China in 2010 and the mass mobilisations against corrupt austerity regimes during the ‘Spring Uprisings’ and in the global North in 2011.

We hope to be able to provide some material and thoughts for the necessary debate about this dispute and the general question of ‘how to organise for the self-emancipation of the working class’.

*** Collection of Quotes from the Front-Line –
*** Summary of the Struggle from June to October 2011 -
*** Chronology -
*** General Political Thesis for the Debate -
*** Further Material -
* Links, Videos and Documents (Written Agreements) -
* Contribution for the Debate: A Critique of the ‘Balance-Sheet of the Maruti Suzuki Struggle’ in GurgaonWorkersNews no.41 -
* Article in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar with Workers’ Reports after the first Factory Occupation in June -
* Short Reports by Workers in Automobile Factories in Manesar/Faridabad, Distributed by FMS Shortly before Dispute at Maruti Suzuki Broke Out -

German Translation
Italian Translation

[1] A preliminary balance-sheet after the first occupation can be found here: http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-941/

———–

*** Collection of Quotes from the Front-Line -

“When we went home finally after a long stint occupying the factory, we saw how fast the world is changing on television, there are hundreds and thousands of people like us, working people, young people, out on the streets, occupying so many cities, New York, London, Rome…, we realized that we are not alone…that makes us feel very happy…that is why you see so many of us smiling here…we are angry, but we are not beaten, we are out here, and we will not give in now easily…the whole world is watching the whole world.”
(Maruti worker after the end of the second occupation)

“Indisciplined workers inside the plant can cause an even greater loss’”
(Maruti Suzuki chairman R.C. Bhargava, after decision for ‘lock-out’)

“But we are not donkeys. We cannot work like slaves. The problem is the immense pressure. They are extracting the work of 5,000 from half that number. We cannot go to the washroom during any other time, and in case we do, we have to give an unconditional apology letter. We are giving our best to the company, but what are we getting in turn? The production capacity of Maruti has gone up from 10 lakh units to 12.7 lakh units in during the last two years, but our salary has not gone up at all. Where is the incentive for hard work?”
(Maruti worker)

“A process of healing had to begin, and it was clear from the amount of feedback we received from that exercise that we had been somewhat cut off from how they [the workers] were feeling.”
(Maruti official after the first occupation and the decision to engage Brahmakumaris spiritual organisation for ‘re-conciliation’)

“My wife and I talked it over. We decided we’re young enough to fight this. What do we have to lose? If we win, we don’t have to be slaves any anymore. If we lose, I’ll find work somewhere else.”
(Maruti worker on strike after second occupation)

“Global investors are watching this very closely. India’s low-cost manufacturing growth story is built upon labour stability.”
(Stock-market trader SMC Global Securities)

“We would not call it a strike as there is no labour union at Munjal Showa. It is a fallout of whatever is happening at Maruti’s plant. The protesting workers from Maruti’s plant joined people here at our plant last evening.”
(C.M. Midha, general manager at Munjal Showa after wildcat strike at his factory)

“These hands have worked so hard that had I put them to use in my family farm in Hisar, my folks would have been very happy. We have delivered 2 lakh cars when the management wanted it, working overtime and breathlessly and we have been taken for granted.” Asked why he does not go back home to work on his farm, he shoots back: “I wanted to be something else.”
(Maruti worker)

“We are on strike in support of the Manesar workers. Once they are issues are resolved then we will raise our demands. Our workers are paid less than what the company pays the Manesar workers. We want the same pay for all workers.”
(Powertrain Union official, 21st of October)

“When you look at this entire situation, then we admit that there is a need for us to bring in adaptability in a young population that is very, very young. I think definitely, it must be somewhere more from the side of the young inexperienced workers and I think it is typically a question of capability to adjust and adapt and have some respect for law”
(Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Managing Executive Officer, after the start of the second occupation)

“Once a problem starts, it does not just go away.”
(Maruti chairman R.C. Bhargava after the ‘lock-out’ started)

————
*** Summary of the Struggle from June to October 2011 -

Struggle at Maruti Suzuki in India:
Wildcat strikes, factory occupations and protest camps

Since June 2011 around 3,500 workers at Maruti Suzuki car plant are confronting the factory regime and its institutional allies in Manesar, in the south of Delhi – also see GurgaonWorkersNews no. 41. Their struggle leaped over to other automobile factories in the industrial corridor, which brought the world’s third largest automobile assembly plant in nearby Gurgaon to a halt. In the most significant workers’ struggle in India in the last two decades the young workers managed to undermine the companies’ attempts to divide them along the lines of temporary and permanent contracts. The struggle attacked the core of the Indian development model and puts it into question: integration into global markets and production structures on the highest technological level combined with harshest casualisation of the workforce. This casualisation is enforced by various means, ranging from the use of country rifles by local labour contractors to sending individual text messages to the workers company mobile phone (a ‘company present’ for the production of 10 million Maruti cars), calling them back to work. The dispute developed in four phases.

The First Occupation

From 4th to 17th of June the workers occupied the assembly plant after management had tried to sabotage their attempt to form an independent union Maruti Suzuki Employees Union(MSEU). Friends, co-workers, family, supporters provided them with food and other necessities. Casual workers engaged in loading finished Maruti cars joined their strike and demanded the same wage rate as the truck drivers. The main trade union centres called for a solidarity strike on 14th of June, but called it off again last minute. The occupation ended with the management offering only a ‘faked’ recognition of the union as part of a ‘company committee’, while penalising the workers with wage reductions of two daily wages per day of strike.

The Underground

From the 17th of June till 28th of August the dispute continued underground. Workers said that after the occupation foremen and management treated them with slightly more respect than usual. During the first weeks only 1,100 instead of 1,200 cars were produced per day. End of June the state authorities refused the application for union registration for formal reasons. The workers refused to take part in the elections of the ‘company union’ Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU), which is based in the Gurgaon plant and which was set up after a major defeat of workers in 2000/2001, after a long lock-out. The company started hiring new manual workers for assembly line positions from Kanpur and other Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), at the same time they fenced of the grassy and open areas inside the premises, which had served the workers as assembly places during the occupation – which can be seen as preparations for a possible lock-out. On 28th of July the police arrived and took four workers from their work-places to the management offices – the management talked about ‘incidences of violence against superiors’. In protest, workers in the whole plant laid down tools and assembled. The company stopped the buses for the B-shift and refused entry to the arriving workers. The A-shift refused to leave the factory. After about an hour management agreed on letting the B-shift start working. At the beginning of August some workers hired through contractor (temporary workers) complained about the work load and demanded that more workers should be hired for the job. The line manager abused one of these workers, the other workers at the line stood up for him – in the end the line manager had to apologize in front of the gathered workers. The company started to complain about go-slows and According to company sources on 24th of August only 437 of the planned 1,230 cars were produced, out of which only 96 made it through quality check. During this period four workers were suspended and around 40 temp workers sent home.

The Lock-out / Protest-Camp

During the night of the 28th of August around 400 riot cops entered the factory and established themselves there. The company erected a metal barrier around the entrance of the plant and demanded from each worker to sign a ‘good conduct bond’ (no go slows, no sabotage, no singing during work, shave regularly etc.). Only twenty or so workers signed, the others set up a protest camp in front of the factory. Maruti Suzuki transferred engineers and supervisors from Gurgaon to Manesar and started to hire new skilled workers on temporary basis. Till the end of the 33 days of lock-out the numbers of workers inside the plant increased to about 1300, 800 of which had been hired fresh.
On 12th of September around 1200 temp workers at neighbouring Munjal Showa factory went on wildcat strike. Munjal Showa manufactures around 60,000 shock absorbers for two-wheelers a day – the tool-down threatened the production at the local Honda and Hero Honda plants. The next day the Munjal management promised to make 125 workers permanent and complained about the negative influence of the Maruti workers.
On 14th of September several thousand workers at Suzuki Powertrain, Suzuki castings and Suzuki Motorcycles in Manesar area went on strike. [1] The HMS union at Castings and Powertrain had been recognised under the pressure of the first occupation at Maruti Suzuki – while at the time AITUC still made major efforts to control the MSEU at Maruti Suzuki. The workers at Powertrain etc. raised their own demands (wages, regularisation of casual workers), but also demanded the end of the ‘good conduct’ lock-out and withdrawal of the suspensions at Maruti Suzuki. Apart from the Maruti Manesar plant, Suzuki Powertrain also supplies the bigger Maruti Gurgaon plant with engines, gear-boxes and axles. After one day of strike management at Gurgaon plant announced to close the factory due to lack of parts for certain models. This is also of importance because Maruti had threatened to ‘re-relocate’ certain models from Manesar back to Gurgaon in order to compensate for the impact of the lock-out. On 16th of September the HMS union called off the strike, after management had considered some of the ‘company internal demands’.
The lock-out continued till 30th of September, in the end the main trade unions advised the workers to sign the ‘bond’, in turn management took back on 18 trainees and converted 44 terminations into suspensions. Both sides declared to take care for harmonious work relations.

The Second Occupation

On 3rd of October production in Manesar was supposed to resume. The management allowed the permanent workers to enter the factory, but refused entry to about 1,200 temporary workers who had taken part in the occupation and protest camp. Management also shifted a lot of permanent workers between departments and production lines, which caused discontent. The wage loss had been a drain on workers scarce resources. Between 3rd and 7th of October around 100 frustrated temp workers took their final dues. The others went to the factory gate put pressure on management (and on their permanent co-workers). On 7th of October the workers inside the Maruti factory occupied the plant again, together with them, workers at Suzuki Powertrain, Castings and Suzuki Motorcycles took the same step: they responded to the attempt of the Maruti management to divide the workers into temps and permanents by engaging in a sit-down strike. They demanded to take back the temps and to re-install the company bus service, which had been cancelled since early October. There were short solidarity strikes in eight more (mainly) automobile factories in the industrial area. At least half of those workers who had been hired during the lock-out and who were now inside the Maruti plant joint the occupation in support of the temporary workers outside.
On 9th of October local labour contractors appear in front of the Suzuki Motorcycle factory, they throw beer bottles and shoot and threatened the striking workers. The Haryana state accused the striking workers to have broken the agreement and gave them 48 hours notice. On 10th of October the Gurgaon plant manufactured only 1,000, instead of 2,800 cars due to lack of parts from Suzuki Powertrain. Two days later management announced closure of the Gurgaon factory.
On 14th of October, after district elections finished and more police force was available, the cops evicted the workers’ make-shift kitchen in the industrial area, which had provided food for around 4000 workers in occupation. Around 2,000 cops were now in the Manesar plant, they started to shut down the canteen, the water supply and the toilets. During the night workers decided to leave the occupation, the next morning the other two occupations ended, too. The strikes continued outside the factories, on the 16th of October Maruti announced that production in Manesar had started on ‘low levels’ with about 800 workers. The same day around 1500 workers at multi-national solar-panel and optical discs manufacturer Moser Baer in nearby NOIDA went on strike for higher wages. The strike at the Maruti Suzuki and the other three Suzuki plants lasted till the 21st of October. In the end management agreed to take back on the 1200 temps and take back some of the terminated and suspended workers. The MSEU is not recognised, but a ‘company welfare board’ is set up, with participation of representatives of both workers and management.

Who are these workers and what do they want?

The pyramid of valorisation
The assembly plant in Manesar was opened in 2007, Maruti hired young skilled workers from various ITIs in Northern India. The majority of workers in their mid 20s. Originally from the hinterland of Haryana or Uttar Pradesh they now live in the industrial dormitory villages around Manesar and Gurgaon, often sharing rooms. Around 1,000 workers are permanents, around 800 are trainees, 400 are apprentices (who work full-time as normal production workers) and 1,200 are temporary workers, hired through contractors. The permanents earn around 13,000 to 17,000 Rs, the trainees around 8,000, the temp workers 6,500 and the apprentices around 4,000. The wage of the permanent workers is composed of a basic wage of around 5,000 Rs (the minimum wage in Haryana) and 8,000 Rs of various bonuses (attendance etc.). This means that the young permanent workers earn considerably less than the permanent workers in the older Gurgaon plant in around 20 km distance or the neighbouring Honda motorcycle plant in Manesar, who both earn around 30,000 Rs. The Maruti factory in Gurgaon was opened in the early 1980s. In 2000/2001 the Gurgaon workers were confronted with a long lock-out of several weeks, similar to the Manesar workers today. Back then the company used the defeat of the workers in order to enforce a Voluntary Retirement Scheme and replaced around half of the permanent workers with temp workers. Today the majority in Gurgaon are temp workers, the severe wage difference – or class division – is managed by the trade union MUKU. The young workers in Manesar did not feel represented by this union and hoped for a solution to their problems by forming their own union.

The new anger, the new aspirations
The young workers have concrete desires: more money and less work and an end to the disciplinary factory regime. They compare their wages to those in other car plants. They complain, that Maruti cuts their bonus payments for any minor delay or as soon as they take a day off, up to 2,200 Rs wage reductions for a day off. They express their discontent about the workload, which does not leave time to get a breath in. The break time does not suffice to walk 400 metres to the canteen and take your meal. You need permission in order to go to the loo. They are angry about the never ending waiting-loops before you get a proper contract. But they did not put these aspirations – more money, less work – in the foreground of the struggle. This could have built a bridge to the 150,000 other workers in Manesar industrial area, because these are common problems and aspirations. Instead they demanded recognition of their union, and later on: re-instatement of the suspended and terminated representatives. They struggle hard and bear huge wage losses for a piece of paper, which they see as a symbol of their unity, as a thorn in the flesh of the hated factory regime and as a hope, that they can establish, solidify or delegate their gains and collective power to a permanent body of representation.

[1]
Suzuki Powertrain India Ltd employs over 2,000 (1,300 – 3,000, 1250 trainee and permanent and over 600 contract workers) workers at its Manesar plant, where it manufactures diesel engines (300,000 per year) and transmissions for supplies to Maruti Suzuki. Suzuki Castings has nearly 700 workers (375-400 trainee and permanent and over 500 contract workers). Suzuki Motorcycles India has 1,400 workers at its plant near Manesar and rolls out about 1,200 motorcycles and scooters a day.

——————

*** Chronology -

Please feel free to correct and add to this chronology. We need a collective memory for the struggles to come.

The First Occupation: 4th of June to 17th of June 2011

3rd of June
Representatives of the MSEU meet the Labour Department to complete the formalities regarding registration of the union. The same day the labour department officials inform Maruti management about the issue. The management begins forcing workers to sign blank papers in order to be able to sabotage the union formation.

4th of June
Start of the 13 days of the first occupation. After the union reps try to retrieve some of the blank signed papers, management resorts to dismissals and suspensions. Workers start a sit-down strike in the afternoon and occupy the factory.

5th of June
The management starts to seal the factory gates and placed a row of security guards in front of them in order to prevent exchange between workers inside and outside, between workers and supporters and media. In nearby Delhi the police attacks the mass protest of ‘anti-corruption Guru’ Ramdev brutally.

6th of June
Only after a demonstration outside the gate, the food supply through family and friends is permitted again. Police is deployed both inside and outside the premises, they remove some tents, which supporters had put up.

8th of June
The main unions AITUC, CITU, HMS, INTUC, UTUC form a ‘joint action committee’ to ‘support’ the strike.

9th of June
The ‘joint action committee’ mobilises “workers of 50 to 60 factories in Gurgaon”, around 1,000 to 2,000 union members gather in front of the Maruti factory gates.

10th of June
The strike is declared illegal by Haryana government. Two truckloads additional police arrive on the factory premises. Under pressure 250 workers decide to leave the occupation. Due to lack of storage space around 200 to 250 of the suppliers, most of them located in the proximity of the plant, have to reduce or stop production.

12th of June
The Maruti Suzuki management offers to take back 5 of the 11 sacked workers, but the union refuses. The main unions announce a two-hour solidarity strike for the 14th of June 2011.

13th of June
The management announces that it would accept a separate union for the Manesar plant, but under the umbrella of the company council, which would be responsible for wage revisions and other general issues – a fake offer.

14th of June
AITUC secretary Sachdev first announces that the two-hours solidarity strike is on, only to proclaim that it is called off ‘due to negotiations’.

16th of June
The management tells the media that it would try to ‘revive’ production lines in the Gurgaon plant for models, which had been moved to Manesar.

17th of June
End of the first occupation. The dispute is settled with help of main trade unions and MUKU (Gurgaon plant union). Maruti promises to turn the dismissals into suspension. Union reps accept ‘no work, no pay’ plus penalty wage reduction. Maruti says that the occupation has caused 93 million USD loss. Maruti Suzuki brings in external trainers and the spiritual organisation Brahmakumaris to organise sessions with the workers, where they were encouraged to speak about their problems. After lock-out at Denso in 2010 the same ‘spiritual organisation’ had to heal the ‘industrial relations’.

The Underground: 18th of June to 28th of August

18th to 25th of June
According to management sources the output of the Manesar factory during that period was only 1,100 cars per day instead of the usual 1,200. Workers report that most supervisors, who had been high-handed, now treat them with a certain awe.

16th of July
After 11 years the MUKU holds elections. Workers in Manesar boycott the stage show. Only a dozen votes were polled.

26th of July
The application to register Maruti Suzuki Employees’ Union (MSEU) is rejected by the state authorities for formal reasons (illegal strike, faulty signatures).

27th of July
A group of workers hired through contractors complain about the work load and demand more workers to be hired for the job. The department supervisor verbally abuses one of the workers. His workmates support him and the supervisor is forced to apologise in front of the workers.

28th of July
Police enters the factory and take away four workers from their work-places and announce six suspensions. In response workers in the whole plant stop working and gather. The company is forced to ‘show’ that the four workers have not been arrested. The company orders that no buses are sent out to collect the B-shift. Workers arrive by their own means, but Maruti refuses them entry. The A-shift workers refuse to leave the factory. After a short stale-mate the company lets the B-shift workers enter.

8th to 17th of August
Although the management promised to withdraw the suspensions if ‘normality returns to the factory’, management refuses to do so. Instead the company continues hiring new ITI workers from Kanpur and other colleges. The company also fences of all grass and outside areas on the premises, which have been used by workers during the occupation. Supervisors start using their previous high-handedness towards the workers again.

23rd to 24th of August
Four more workers suspended. The company complains about production loss due to go slow and sabotage. “On August 24, 1,230 cars were planned to be produced, but only 437 were assembled. Out of which, just 96 cars could pass quality check”.

The Protestcamp / Lock-Out: 28th of August to 30th of September

28th of August
Start of the 33 days of lock-out / protest camp. During the night, when only a few hundred workers and supervisors on overtime are in the plant a 300 to 400 strong police force in riot gear enter the factory and establish themselves there.

29th of August
The management refuses to let any worker enter the factory without signing the ‘good-conduct undertaking’. Only 18 workers sign. A nearly 500-metre-long aluminium wall is put up covering the service lane, blocking the view from both inside and outside. Notices announce dismissal of 11 workers and 10 suspensions.

30th of August
The company claims to have started ‘production’ in the highly automated areas (weld-, press-, paint-shop) and announces to ‘have found 200 potential ITI workers who will be hired on contract basis in the next 2-3 days’. 12 more workers sacked and 16 more suspended – allegedly all office-bearers of the MSEU.

31st of August
“The company brought in 120 ITI-trained workers this morning to the plant on a contract basis to strengthen manpower for assembly operations”. In addition, 50 engineers from the Gurgaon factory and 290 supervisors are working at the Manesar plant. The company claims to have 500 trained and experienced people available for production. Only 36 workers have signed the bond so far.

1st of September
Nearly 3,000 members from 35 unions in the region assemble in front of the Manesar plant to express solidarity with the protesting workers. The unions announce to go on a tool-down strike the following week if the management declines to negotiate.

2nd of September
Some contractors and Maruti middle-management round up around 150 Maruti workers in Aliyar village near the Maruti plant in Manesar. The workers are threatened and some are beaten. After workers resist the contractors/thugs, the police arrive and arrest some of the Maruti workers. Meanwhile the employers’ association ASSOCHAM asks the Haryana government “to take firm action against those who are trying for sometime to malign the name of Gurgaon, which has become destination for many Indian and global companies.” The company claims to have produced 125 Swift cars from Manesar Plant A and Plant B this day. Normal production in Manesar: 1,200 cars (150 SX4, 300 to 400 A Stars, 650 to 750 Swift).

3rd of September
Some 70 students from Delhi universities visit the Maruti workers. Towards evening, workers have to shift their protest-tent across the road, as the management obtained a court injunction against any protest within 100 metres of the factory. The company claims the current strength of people available for production to be around 800 (90 engineers from Gurgaon, 290 supervisors and 425 new manual workers). The new workers have to stay inside the factory day and night. This workforce is supposed to have produced 150 Swift.

5th of September
The MSEU publishes a communiqué: “The production was at a total halt in the beginning of last week, and in the last 2-3 days, a meagre 8-10 cars were produced in the plant, which are all faulty models somehow clubbed together.” The company claims that so far 63 permanent workers have signed the ‘good conduct bond’.

11th of September
The MSEU meets with representatives from around thirty trade unions and repeats its demand of the right to organise and unionise, to withdraw the charge-sheet, termination and suspension of 57 workers. In turn Maruti announces: “From Tuesday onwards the company will start hiring trained technicians, who will be on the permanent rolls, to replace the current workers who refuse to sign the bond.”

12th of September
Wildcat strike at automobile supplier Munjal Showa in Manesar, which spreads to the companies’ Gurgaon and Haridwar plant. The 1,200 workers in Manesar are hired on temporary basis and are not unionised, they produce around 60,000 shock-absorbers per day. They demand permanent contracts and the company to stop shifting workers between plants. The production at motorcycle factories of Honda and Hero Honda is threatened due to lack of supply.

13th of September
The wildcat strike at Munjal Showa ends. The management agrees to make 125 workers permanent, and to promise that after completion of 3 [5?] years of training, all workers will be made permanent. The management complains about ‘negative influence from Maruti Suzuki workers’. AITUC, CITU, HMS and 11 members of independent unions revive the ‘Joint Action Committee’. In Gurgaon around 1,500 union members and students demonstrate in support of Maruti workers. Maruti claims to have 1,100 work-force in Manesar, after having hired additional 100 ITI workers today.

14th of September
Strike at Suzuki Powertrain Ltd. and Suzuki Castings in Manesar and workers at Suzuki Motorcycle India Ltd. in nearby Kherki Dhaula in solidarity with Maruti Suzuki workers and for own demands. More than 4,000 workers are involved. When asked for support MUKU at Gurgaon plant talks about ‘potential of a hunger strike next week’. Around 350 workers hired through contractor engaged with loading and unloading at Maruti Manesar plant also go on strike and demand driver instead of helper grade. Suzuki announces to locate a planned $1.3 billion passenger car factory in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

15th of September
Negotiations at Suzuki Powertrain, Casting and Motorcycles. Scuffles at gates of Maruti Manesar plant when the company tries to force three buses with temp workers inside the plant. Four strikers injured and arrested. The media reports about 11 injured supervisors.

16th of September
While Maruti announces to close the Gurgaon plant due to lack of parts from Suzuki Powertrain, the union HMS negotiates an end of strike at Suzuki Powertrain and Motorcycles, the workers at Suzuki castings also call off their strike. Gurgaon plant operational again on 18th of September. Meanwhile the “Joint Action Committee” calls for demonstration in Gurgaon, but after the district president of the AITUC was arrested (‘risk of ‘breach of peace’) the demonstration is postponed.

17th of September
Short strike Manesar Honda HMSI plant in order to get the AITUC officer out, at 2pm he is released against bail. At the stock markets analysts downgraded their call on MSIL shares from ‘buy’ to ‘accumulate’.

18th of September
Police arrests three MSEU leaders when they come out from negotiations with management and state administration on basis of phoney charges.

19th of September
The three MSEU leaders are released. Meeting of worried company leaders (Maruti, Bony Polymers, Honda, Rico Auto) to discuss the industrial dispute’. Maruti announces that they will ask 350 trainees to resume duty within next three days and claims to have produced 600 Swift from Gurgaon and Manesar plant (no separate figures for Manesar available). HMS leader proclaim that workers are ready to sign ‘good conduct bonds’, but insist on taking back all suspended and dismissed.

20th of Sep
Maruti dismisses five more workers in connection with the alleged scuffles at the gate.

21st of September
“After exceeding the normal production levels for the Swift, the company is planning to start production of the SX4 and A-star models at Manesar plant,” Maruti claims in a statement and announces to have hired 100 more regular workers. 104 workers at the Manesar plant are said to have signed the ‘Good Conduct Bond’ since the start of the dispute.

22nd of September
Day of solidarity: Demonstration by section of railway union in Japan against arrest of Maruti union leaders. About a dozen trade unions demonstrate in various places across India. More than 100 people protest in front of Haryana Bhawan in Delhi and at a Maruti Suzuki showroom near Connaught Place. Meanwhile the media announces that the total workforce at Manesar has increased to more than 1,300.

23rd of September
Company sends individual SMS to permanent workers mobile phones and asks them to go back to work. Workers’ families in villages are also contacted to ‘convince’ their sons/husbands to resume their duty.

24th of September
Maruti claims to have produced a total of 700 Swift, out of which 400 in Manesar, no other models. 116 workers are said to have signed the bond.

26th of September
Maruti claims that in total 1,400 workers are working at Manesar factory, out of which around 800 newly hired.

27th of September
Talks fail, workers in Manesar accept MUKU (Gurgaon plant union) as negotiator. MUKU announces a ‘hunger strike’ for the 28th of September, in case the management will not move. The AITUC indicates it will press for an immediate return to work if the company agrees to place about half of 62 workers it has fired for “indiscipline and insubordination” on suspension instead. The Economic Times claims that total work-force is at 1,500 and that Maruti started producing the second (out of three) model in Manesar.

29th of September
Two weeks of lock-out of 2,500 Bosch automobile workers in Bangalore begins after tool-down strike. Bosch wanted to outsource certain work-steps and started to dismantle machinery.

30th of September
Agreement and end of lock-out / protest camp. Workers sign bond; 18 trainees are taken back; 15 dismissals revoked and turned into suspension; total 44 permanent workers now still suspended. ‘No work, no pay’ plus one daily wage per day wage reduction as penalty. Maruti says that the 33 days lock-out created 150 million USD loss (22,000 cars).

The Second Occupation: 7th of October to 14th of October

3rd of October
On the first day of work after the lock-out / protest camp Maruti management refuses entry to the 1,200 workers hired through contractor who took part in the protest and previous occupation. Inside the factory Maruti decided to shift a lot of workers from one work-station to the other, which caused discontent, so did the company move to suspend the company bus service, which fetches workers who live further away.

3rd to 7th of October
In frustration and at the end of financial resources around 100 workers hired through contractor take their final dues, while the rest puts pressure on company and fellow workers inside the plant. Contractors try to prevent workers to get to the Maruti gates by threatening them with violence.

7th of October
Workers inside Maruti Suzuki Manesar plant, Suzuki Powertrain, Suzuki Castings and Suzuki Motorcycles occupy their factories in support of the ‘locked-out’ temporary workers at Maruti. Workers at Omax Auto, Lumax DT, HiLex, Lumax, Endurance Technologies, Degania Medical Devices, FCC Rico, Satyam Auto go on solidarity strike, a total of more than 10,000 workers.
There are an estimated 2,000 workers inside the Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory. This includes about 700 regular workers and also the workers newly hired during the 33 days of lock-out.

8th of October
The company uses the media to claim that the workers are indulging “in several random acts of violence and damaged property inside the factory premises.” “The agitating workers attacked co-workers, supervisors and executives in multiple incidents of violence.” They claim to have ‘rescued’ 350 workers from the factory with the help of the police.

9th of October
Maruti Suzuki India dismisses 10 workers, terminates five trainees, suspends 10 and ‘rescues’ another 100 employees from the plant. Still around 1,500 workers inside and over 1,000 workers outside the factory. Newly hired workers inside the plant ‘fraternise’ with strikers. Meanwhile armed labour contractors (Tirupati Enterprises) fire gun-shots and throw bottles at striking workers outside the Suzuki Motorcycle plant. At least three workers get injured. Police lets attackers get off.

10th of October
Occupations at Powertrain, Motorcycles and Maruti Suzuki continue. Maruti officials announce, that they ‘will need the police to evict the workers”. Police is overstretched due to election time in Hirsa, another district in Haryana, ‘private bouncers’ are hired to keep people out of the industrial area of Manesar – comrades say that the ‘atmosphere is tense’. The Haryana labour department issues a ‘breach of settlement’ notice on striking workers.

11th of October
Due to the halt in supply of diesel engines and transmissions from Suzuki Powertrain India, the production at Maruti’s Gurgaon plant falls to 1,000 units against a normal daily production of 2,800 units. The local class of land-lords and village hierarchy mobilises against the strike: village councils in four villages around Manesar write to the state authorities to ‘find a quick resolution to the strike’. More physical threats from local contractors / village leaders on striking workers.

12th of October
Production in Gurgaon plant falls to 600 units.

13th of October
Maruti announces to shut Gurgaon plant due to lack of parts after five days of strike at Suzuki Powertrain. Some models (M800, Omni, Eeco and Gypsy) do not need parts from Suzuki Powertrain, but their production volume accounts only for a small share. Maruti Suzuki suppliers in turn start to shut their plants, for example Sona Koyo. The elections in Hirsa district are over. At a gate meeting main trade union leaders announce that they will bring the whole of Gurgaon to a stand-still if the police touches the workers inside the factory.

14th of October
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh observes regarding Maruti, ” Labor unrest is a matter of serious concerns, we need to address it efficiently.” 18 workers at Powertrain and 10 at Motorcycle plant are dismissed in the morning. One office member of the MSEU union arrested from his house at 2 am. Raids also take place at houses of other MSEU representatives. More cops enter Manesar, they take down the workers’ food-kitchen, which had supplied around 4,000 workers at Powertrain and Maruti Suzuki plant. There are said to be around 1,500 to 2,500 cops inside the Maruti factory now, they shut down access to water, canteen and toilets. Late at night workers decide to leave the factory and continue strike outside. Maruti complains that some ‘robots have been damaged and machine settings altered’. Earlier the day, according to the media, over 100 analysts, investors and fund managers of Maruti Suzuki participated in a conference call with Sonu Gujjar, president of Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, to ‘talk about the situation’. No leaders of the main trade unions around.

15th of October
Workers at Powertrain and Motorcycles decide to end their occupation and continue strike outside. The MSEU publishes a communiqué saying that they stick to the unity between temp workers and permanents and that they call all trade unions to show support. The AITUC says: “We will observe a solidarity day on October 17″.

The Second Protest-Camp / Strike: 16th of October to 21st of October

16th of October
Maruti workers decide to celebrate Diwali as a black day if demands not met. Maruti announces that “Production has started in a limited way at the company’s plant in Manesar. To start with, the weld shop has been made operational.” Production in Gurgaon resumes, too, although only those models which do not need parts from Powertrain Suzuki Powertrain. Meanwhile in nearby NOIDA several hundred workers at solar-panel and optical disc factory of the multi-national Moser Baer go on strike and demand higher wages.

17th of October
Talks at Maruti between management and union reps fail. The trade union ‘day of solidarity’ takes place: an afternoon (and after work) rally in Gurgaon, several thousand union members from Gurgaon factories and students attend.

18th of October
The company claims that now 400 workers work in the Manesar plant and that 1,700 cars have been produced in Gurgaon. An two-hour tool-down strike announced by the main trade unions were called off, because ‘management entered negotiations again’.

19th of October
Maruti announced that work-force in Manesar is at 600 and that they rolled out 200 cars. Suzuki also claims that production has been started at Powertrain, but the president of the Suzuki Powertrain India Employee Union says that no work happens at the plant apart from cleaning.

20th of October
A dozen unions in Kolkata announce solidarity rallies for the Maruti workers. Labourstart campaign delivers more than 4200 letters to local management in less than 24 hours, complaining about the repression.

21st of October
Agreement in Manesar: the management agrees to take back 64 permanent workers, but another 33 will remain suspended (30 from Maruti, 3 from Powertrain). The 1,200 workers hired through contractors are supposed to be taken back on. Bus service is supposed to be provided again. Instead of recognising MSEU the company will set up a ‘grievance committee’ and ‘labour welfare committee’ with “equal representation from the management and the workers . Presence of a Labour Officer from the state government will be a key comforting factor”. Strikes at Suzuki Powertrain and Suzuki Motorcycles are also called off. The negotiations are said to have been a 42 hours marathon during which workers representatives were put under pressure of ‘pending arrests’ and ‘no permission to leave the venue of negotiations’.

22nd of October
Production resumes in Manesar.

——–

*** General Political Thesis for the Debate -

The following thoughts remain on a rather superficial level due to lack of opportunity for first-hand exchange with workers during the struggle. They are at the same time a call to intensify the debate on an international level.

1) The struggle at Maruti Suzuki was the most important workers’ struggle in India since two decades. For the first time on mass scale the new composition of a young industrial work-force came to itself by confronting the factory regime. They undermined the division in temporary and permanent workers, which had been imposed as a main line of division within industrial working class in India – and not only in India – since the early 1990s. The workers hit the core of the Indian regime’s developmental model, which consists of the integration into the global market and production structure at the highest level of technology and ‘productive cooperation’ – combined with the severe suppression of the aspirations of the work-force, which emerge with this integration.

We say ‘most important struggle’ less because of its quantitative scale, or militancy, or result, but because of its structural character. The struggle brought together the subjective anger of a new workforce with its objective position in the core of the current developmental cycle. Since three decades we witnessed the dismantling of old workers’ core centres, the main struggles evolved as defensive struggles. The centres moved from the textile mill strikes in the mid-1980s (which were undermined by new division of labour between automatised spinning and informalised weaving processes). Throughout the 1990s, the centre shifted to the struggles in the major (automobile) manufacturing companies (Escorts, Maruti Suzuki) [1] against capital’s attack in form of ‘privatisation’, outsourcing, casualisation. These were decades of major defeats of the old trade union movement, which was only able to compensate for their decline by co-managing the emerging class division between a mass of casualised workers and a core of permanents.

We currently see a reversal of the historical trend in automobile manufacturing. From Detroit at the beginning of the 20th century to the Midlands in the UK, to FIATs Turin and Toyota’s factories in the 1950/60s to South Korea and Brazil in the 1970s: while the first generation of car workers produced cars for the middle-classes, the workers of the second generation – through struggles and general productivity increases – were able to afford the product they produce themselves. In India, if at all, this trend has reversed itself, the second generation of car workers is worse off. They are also less attached to company spirits and the automobile dream. At Maruti the various carrots and waiting-loops have lost their gripping effects. The ladder from apprentice, trainee, temp worker, “junior workman” “associate workman”, to the Nirvana of a permanent status or even an award as employee of the year has been broken, the level of casualisation is too high in order to mobilise workers’ illusions. Similarly the patriarchal whip of ‘warning letters’ – three times too late, too slow, too ill and you are out – and other threats have become blunt. Maruti wants to copy the paternalistic ‘Fordist model’ of interference in workers ‘private life’ – workers are supposed to abstain from public activities harmful to the reputation of the company, they have to announce once they are in debts – without being able or willing to pay them the ‘Ford wage’.

The current composition of the workforce at companies like Maruti Manesar plant is the outcome of the defeats and restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s and the further integration into the global production system. It took the working class two decades to ‘find itself’ and turn this ‘precarious, but central structure’ into a more radical basis for its struggle. Current struggles at Bosch in Bangalore or wildcats at General Motors in Gujarat are other indicators that the conflict has returned to the centre again. Here we can see parallels to the strike wave in automobile factories in China in summer 2010. [2]

2) During the last years the divisions between permanent and temporary workers in Gurgaon area deepened. In many cases ‘union recognition’ was enforced by joint-struggles of both categories of workers, but once established, the trade unions could not reverse this trend of increasing separation.

In the few cases where trade unions were established in modern manufacturing industries in Gurgaon area during the last decade this lead to an ‘improvement’ of the position of union members, wage levels rose up to 25,000 to 30,000 Rs, management was able to offer these unionised permanent workers some stability, three-years agreements, regular productivity/sales-related wage hikes. But this ‘improvement’ was paralleled by the reduction of the permanent unionised work-force to about 30 per cent of the total staff. In many cases these workers were granted if not supervisory, but ‘privileged’ position in relation to the increasing mass of temporary workers within the production process, whose wage levels dropped in real terms and hover at about 5,000 Rs. For them ‘three years wage agreements’ have little to do with the reality of frequent job changes and mobility. In many cases the ‘enforcement’ of trade union recognition against the company was only achievable by ‘struggling in unity’ by both permanent and temporary workers, but tragically after establishment the (permanent) workers did not find ways to bridge the widening gap between ‘represented minority’ and ‘marginalised majority’ – see development of the union at Honda HMSI in Manesar. [3]

During the last years, the ‘casualised majority’ of workers appeared several times on the stage of workers’ struggle in Gurgaon and Manesar, e.g. during factory occupations at Hero Honda or Delphi by thousands of temporary workers [4], but in these struggles ‘permanent and temporary’ workers had remained being separated. This was not the case during the current Maruti Suzuki struggle. The material division (quantitative ratio on the shop floor, wages, qualification, origin etc.) between permanent and temporary workers have been less pronounced in the first place. Furthermore, Maruti Suzuki does not seem willing or able to ‘offer’ the young permanent workers a similar ‘privileged’ position (managed by a respectable union body) which permanent workers had been offered during the last two decades. They know that the standards at the central assembly set the standards elsewhere. Both, the objective factors (“ability to finance a division”) and subjective response (“acceptance of division” by workers) were not given at Maruti Suzuki. This is why the struggle carried on.

3) The situation of the global automobile industry makes it difficult Maruti Suzuki to ‘finance’ a class division by granting the permanent workers a privileged position through trade union management. It forces the company to casualise the workforce in the new plants. A draconic disciplinary regime is supposed to impose a more intense combination of underdevelopment (‘speed-up without investment’ of manual work, extension of working hours) and development (automatisation in upstream departments etc.) within the factory. All this fuelled the collective anger.

The conditions have changed quite fundamentally since 2000/2001, when Maruti enforced a major split within the geology of the work-force in Gurgaon or even since 2005, when Honda in Manesar did the same. The global pressure on wages and conditions increased fundamentally with the contraction of markets since the crisis 2008. Due to the lock-out Maruti started production at Manesar ‘Plant B’ three month earlier than planned – a more automatised plant, which was presented as the technological fix to workers’ unrest. Here in an direct sense workers’ struggle pushes capital into aggravation of its contradictions, expansion of productive capacities while reducing its living (and consuming) self. Including the two Manesar plants and the Gurgaon plant Maruti Suzuki’s capacity will be around 1.7 million cars a year, this is nearly as much as the current total domestic Indian market. In July Ford and PSA had announced to each open new assembly plants in Sanand, Gujarat – the market pressure is increasing through overcapacity and potentially swindling demand. The cheap cash for consumers crunches. The Reserve Bank of India has raised interest rates 12 times since mid-March 2010 to rein in inflation, driving down demand for cars. In India about 80 percent of purchases are funded by loans.

The crisis has proven that there is no ‘de-coupling’, meaning that there is no national market or sector or company, which could remain unaffected by the general conditions. ‘Suzuki’ is not a ‘Japanese’ company anymore, the Indian subsidiary accounts for 55 per cent of Suzuki’s global operating income. At the same time its not solely an ‘automobile manufacturer’, which would only depend on car sales. Life Insurance Corporation, ICICI Prudential Life and Bajaj Allianz are among the major shareholders of Maruti Suzuki and the pressure on banking and insurance markets will reverberate within the assembly lines.

Behind the surface of ‘market’ pressures the core of ‘wage’ pressure reveals itself more blatantly on a global level. In September 2011 – while the struggle at Maruti was still intense – the United Auto Workers union in the US agreed on the ‘Two-Tier’-wage-system, which means that newly hired workers will earn only half the wage of the older workers, which will cause an enormous downward pressure on the global wage cascade from the North to the South. These wage pressures are not mediated anymore, with the integration of ‘Indian’ car production into global markets it becomes an ‘immediate’ global wage. Manesar is Maruti Suzuki’s sole global manufacturing base for the A-Star, which exports the compact car to various markets in Western and Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and other parts of Asia. In Europe, Suzuki sells this car as ‘Alto’ and Nissan as ‘Pixo’ – around 9 per cent of Maruti Suzuki’s revenue comes from export.

The squeeze is not solely on wages, but on workers’ brains and muscles. Under these conditions ‘capital has to eat itself’, it has to squeeze workers beyond physical capacities, without re-investments. Within the factory the split (and combination) between development (automatisation) and under-development (manual speed-up, double-shifts) aggravated. After 2008 the work pressure in Manesar increased considerably. Instead of investing into separate production lines, different models were produced at the same ‘flexi-line’, increasing work stress. With an official capacity of 250000 cars, Manesar manufactured 350000 in 2010. Certain departments of the plant, particularly in Plant B, became more automatised after 2010, while the manual operations were simply ‘sped-up’. Workers were more frequently forced to work double-shifts and Sundays, the whole ‘disciplinary regime’ has to be seen on this background.

“The paintshop at the Manesar plant is a schizophrenic combination of cutting-edge robotic technology and brute physical labour. One one side are 12 painting robots. On the other, are workers carrying 25 kilo headloads of used screens up two flights of stairs and returning with a 30 kilo load of clean screens. Each worker has to carry 70-80 screens up and down the stairs, working an extra hour without pay if the job is not done by the end of the shift.”
(FMS, July 2011)

4) If Maruti had calculated to ‘save the investment on a separate trade union’, the actual course of the struggle forced them to accept major losses in order to smash the emerging workers’ collective and to re-impose their regime. In a wider sense it was a ‘political price’ to pay, in defence of the ‘developmental model’ of the ruling class.

The dispute inflicted major losses on Maruti Suzuki at a time when according company claims ‘there are 100,000 open orders for the Maruti Suzuki Swift’ and waiting-times of more than four months. If we leave out all extra-costs (resting capital and capacities, payment for extra-security, bribes, legal and propaganda work etc.) and calculate an average price of a Maruti Suzuki Swift at 400,000 Rs [8,000 USD or 5,800 Euro] when sold to the traders, then a loss of 1,200 cars per day in Manesar amounts to 48 crore Rs [9,600,000 USD or 7,000,000 Euro]. A total loss of 75,000 units, as Maruti claims to have lost between June and October 2011, would amount to 3000 crore Rs [600 million USD or 435 million Euro]. Also Maruti Suzuki’s share-values have suffered, between June and mid-October the share price fell by 16 per cent.

A lot of the business media people wonder about the seemingly ‘irrational stubbornness’ of Maruti to rather swallow such kind of losses than accepting ‘the workers’ right’ to a separate trade union – quite a lot of leftist might have shared this view. We think it is less about the ‘violation of workers’ rights’, but about Maruti Suzuki having to confront developments during the course of the struggle, which forced them to ‘fight it out’. It became a question of who rules on the shop-floor. It became a question of whether capital let workers undermine the core of the current developmental regime by joint unlawful direct action.

5) During the last three decades the local industrial ruling class developed a fairly repetitive manual in order to transform workers’ unrest into leaps of re-structuring. This strategy was able to integrate trade union forms of struggle as long as it stuck to the rules of representation, labour law and/or other calculable forms of struggle. The workers’ actions at Maruti broke the master-plan at several points.

The use of ‘good conduct bonds’ or ‘lock-outs’ in order to tire out struggling workers is no new development. [5] We have seen hundred of times how this strategy in combination of ‘company’-focussed trade union struggle ended in hundreds of defeats. If the management is not able to get the general situation on the shop-floor under control – or if the general conditions force them into re-structuring – they prepare themselves for a ‘showdown’. Often they try to focus on the question of representation, either by crushing the workers’ representatives or by promoting and co-opting them, in order not to have to deal with an unruly and inadressable mass. If that proves to be difficult management prepares for a lock-out (impose overtime to fill stocks, arrange alternative sourcing of extra-parts, start to arrange supply of ‘new workers’). Depending on the economic climate they might announce to ‘close the whole factory’.

The management provokes the workers, e.g. by suspending their representatives. In order to circumvent the accusation of an illegal lock-out management issues ‘good conduct bonds’, hoping that the main trade unions stick to the ‘traditional ways’ of struggle, which means: refusal to sign, confining the struggle to the company gate and occasional demonstrations, reducing the conflict to the question of ‘our victimised leaders’ and thereby making it an individual issue which has little danger to explode into the wider proletarian area. At the same time management tries to keep up production, partly in order to avoid losses, but mainly in order to demoralise the workers. In the meantime they attack the workers outside by all means necessary (thugs, cops, boredom).

After some weeks there is an agreement, which normally results in severe re-structuring and re-placement. The trade union leaders can proclaim ‘a victory’ (“We got our representatives back on” or “We prevented the closure of the company”). The formerly combative collective is dismantled, e.g. by taking back only the permanent workers, or by shifting workers around within the plant. In this way most struggles in recent years got lost and re-structuring boosted. The fact that this set-up has repeated itself so many times is not mainly due to the cunning plans of management or the ‘compliancy’ of the main trade unions, but because of a specific configuration between general economic situation, composition of the workforce and blockades in the re-structuring process.

These conditions have changed. Maruti Suzuki was not able to enforce the usual strategy to deal with industrial unrest. This is mainly due to the unlawful collective action of the workers by occupying the plant and by the threat of spreading wildcat strikes. Instead of sticking to ‘legal campaigns’ ‘and well-meaning symbolic protests’ for their union rights, workers went into an offensive, which gave them an advantage position and raised the stakes. The fact that Maruti Suzuki could not undermine the workers collectivity neither by severe repression nor by replacing them during the lock-out is partly due to the specific nature of the industry and partly due to the general social atmosphere.

6) The decision of workers not to sign the ‘good conduct bond’ and to hand over the factory floor as the main ground for collective struggle to management was a tricky one. Maruti Suzuki did not manage to get full production going during the 33 days of lock-out, but they came close enough in order for the lock-out to become effective as a means of demoralisation.

If it had not been a central assembly plant – an integrated production process requiring the cooperation of hundreds, thousands of workers inside the plant and in combination with the suppliers – the struggle would very likely have been lost during the time of the ‘lock-out’. The company would have managed to demoralise the workers by being able to return to ‘normal’ production with some of the supervisors and newly hired staff. The ‘combative’ stance ‘not to sign the bonds’ would have turned into a ‘voluntary defeat’, because workers would have renounced to stay in the heart of the beast, where they have a faceless collective power: within the production process.

We should critically examine how close the Maruti management came to actually being able to get production going again – with the help of supervisors, engineers from the Manesar and Gurgaon plant and hundreds of newly hired ITI workers. Maruti Suzuki limited the attempt to get production going to only one of the three models manufactured in Manesar. On 31st of August, the third day of the lock-out, the company started production with 50 engineers and 290 supervisors, who had partly been shifted from Gurgaon, and 120 newly hired manual workers. They said that these 460 workers managed to produce 60 cars. Concerned about the companies’ share price development, Maruti Suzuki from then on announced new ‘production records’ on a daily level. On the 3rd of September 840 workers are supposed to have produced 200 cars. On 5th of September the MSEU declared in a communiqué that these figures are more or less bad propaganda, and that not more than a couple of cars are produced per day. Maruti claimed that at the end of the lock-out 1,400 workers produced around 400 Swift a day (normal output around 650) and that they had started to produce the A Star.

They surely did not manage to get production going within a month time, but they came close enough. This forces us in future struggles to make sure to a) not leave the terrain of the factory ‘completely’ to the management, even if there is great unity amongst the workers and b) not to think to be able to rely ‘on ones own strength alone’ even if this strength is as quantitatively massive as in the case of central assembly plants. The collective stance “We all stay out”, “We will not give in into their good conduct bullshit” is definitely an expression of ‘collective will’ – but if not combined with a major effort to actively connect with other workers in the area in order to spread the conflict it might be a step into a swampy ground.

7) Manesar could have turned into India’s Mahalla. [6] The Occupation at Maruti Suzuki took place while the populist ‘anti-corruption’-movement was attacked brutally in nearby Delhi. The social atmosphere (disillusion with corrupt political class, food price development, ‘desperate’ expressions of discontent) is shared with the countries of the ‘Spring Uprisings’ in Northern Africa. Previous to these uprisings, repression triggered unrest and explosive fusions rather than quelling them.

If the extreme poles of managements strategy to defeat a workers’ collective is to either replace them as collective producers or to repress them with brute force then both poles have proven fragile during the Maruti dispute. In 2005 we witnessed that neither Honda management nor the Indian state has major problems with crushing heads of hundreds of workers if it seems like a good way to return to ‘harmonious industrial relations’. This did not happen this time. There are various reasons why Maruti did not consider a violent eviction at the time. Obviously there is the danger of damaging machinery (and the cooperative will of hundreds of skilled workers!) and the possibility that an eviction will not go down well with the other workers of more than 500 factories in Industrial Model Town Manesar.

But we think that there are more specific reasons for why the ruling class is very cautious to make use of mass repression in current times, and these seem to be global reasons: in the current social atmosphere repression does not seem to instil mainly fear, but could create incalculable trigger effects of unrest. We have witnessed this during the recent uprisings in Northern Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt. The parallel to the situation in India is not a mere abstraction. The time of occupation coincided with the rather populist ‘anti-corruption movement’ (Ramdev, Harare), there were the violent attacks of the state on the Ramdev followers in Delhi in early June. There have been ‘suicide attempts’ of followers in desperate acts of ‘solidarity’. An attack on the occupation only miles away could have sparked all kinds of fusions and reactions – some of the Maruti workers had referred positively to the anti-corruption movement. This is understandable giving general situation and the concrete ‘corruption’ at Maruti Suzuki, e.g. at the annual remuneration of the CEO has increased by 419 per cent between 2007 and 2011, while workers’ real wages (and general profitability) dropped. Similarly the allegation that high-rank manager in Maruti’s HR department are personally involved in labour contracting business. This ‘corruption’ is obviously ‘unfair’, but just a drop in the sea of crisis. We have to see the ‘corruption’ primarily as an expression of the current instability of the system: future (profitable) prospects are bleak, the ruling class looks for immediate ‘personal gains’, instead of long-term investment.

During the course of the dispute the area around the Maruti factory turned into something like a ‘proletarian protest-camp’, various political groups turned up, students, family members. It expressed a certain need for spaces to come together in support and debate about what is happening in this world, a need which we can see spreading from Tahrir, to the Spanish square occupations to Wall Street. Manesar could have turned into an Indian Mahalla, where the repression of an organically very organised industrial working class could have given a whole different framework and impetus to a general ‘populist anti-government’ sentiment. We don’t advise workers to look for ‘formal alliances’ with these type of movements, but we should be aware of the general fragile social fabric.

In this social atmosphere the ‘means of repression’ had to be more subtle, but they revealed the wide social front-line which workers have to face: from the desks of the state administration to the metal barriers set-up by the company and staffed with private security guards, from the riot cops to the individual sms send by management to workers’ company phones, calling them back to work – these mobile phones had been a company present for 10 million produced Marutis. From the drunken land-lord thugs and local labour contractors attacking them in their ‘villages’ or in front of the factory with guns to the ‘soothing’ spiritual brain-wash of Brahmakumaris, hired by Human resource management to ‘heal’ the workers from their anger after the occupation. From the ‘panchayat’ leaders of the Manesar villages, linking up with the multi-national Haryana regime, to the investment fund advisors asking for ‘de-risking’ of Maruti’s production location. From the media regime, which portrays them as villains or victims to the production manager who orders to shift them away from their old work-mates to other lines and departments. And last but not least all those institutionalised leaders of trade union apparatuses who promise and postpone and mobilise and call off, all rather in the interest of their own organisations than to strengthen the collective power of the workers.

But we think that all these ‘cogs of the system’ can not explain the paradox that although Maruti’s position had been difficult and the losses significant, the workers did not manage to turn the (company) regime’s weaknesses into their own victory.

8. Despite the unity and sacrifice, despite the 100,000 open orders for Swift cars, despite having imposed full(-stop!) control over the factory… in many ways the workers lost, without having been defeated. We cannot ignore the material wage losses and glorify the struggle for ‘dignity’ and union ideals.

To ask about ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ and ‘true demands’ of workers’ struggles is obviously an awkward matter – see contribution to debate on first Maruti occupation in this newsletter. Let’s start with the official demands and the gains and losses of workers as a result of the struggle. The initial official demand – the recognition of a separate union – has not been enforced, the company and administration offered a watered-down version of a welfare-board. If we just look at the ‘black on white’-results in form of wage slips, termination/suspension letters and agreements, then the workers paid a rather high price for this. Several dozen workers have been suspended, more than 100 temporary workers left the job at Maruti out of frustration – particularly after they were not taken back on 3rd of October. All agreements had an element of ‘moral punishment’ for the workers, either in form of penalty wage cuts or in form of the ‘good conduct bond’, which ‘on paper’ prohibits them to gossip or sing on the job or spend too much time on the toilet. The wage losses are considerably: the sole wage loss amounts to more than 50 days wages, if Maruti actually imposes the penalty wage cuts on the permanents then we talk about a total of about 130 daily wages loss. [7] The media likes to emphasise that these young workers a often unmarried and son’s of small peasants with brothers working somewhere in the army, and that therefore they are able to stick it out ‘with family support’, but anyone can imagine that this is a heavy loss to take, which definitely sets a limit to the participation of poorer and/or temporary workers.

This ‘material’ defeat is contrasted by something like a ‘moral victory’, in the sense that workers fought together for a common aim in form of ‘the union’, symbol for of their unity, for their own interest opposed to the interest of the company and for their hope in future betterment through union representation. They stood up for those who got suspended or terminated throughout the struggle (mainly representatives and office bearers of the union) and – and this is one of most significant decisions a collective of workers took in recent history of class struggle – for their ‘excluded’ temporary co-workers. This is their victory. We can go even further and say that although workers’ struggles tend to have ‘demands’ for betterment of their material situation, in many ways the collective struggle in itself is what we want and what in the end will improve the situation – with or without prove on paper in form of an agreement. We want to say “Enough!” together with others, link up, create a moment where everything is put into question, where we learn new things and where ‘their haughty power’ is broken. This is the political content of any struggle. And the Maruti workers did it! If all this happens around the ‘demand for a union’, let it be, but…

9) It was a tragic short-coming on the side of the workers not too put their concrete necessities into the foreground of the struggle: “More Money, Less Work” – because these had been general necessities of the mass of workers in Industrial Model Town Maneser. If combined with concrete steps ‘from group of workers to group of workers’ to actively generalise, this could have given an additional forceful dynamic to the struggle.

It is useless to debate whether the ‘demand for union recognition’ – reduced later on to the sole demand of ‘withdrawal of termination and suspension’ – has actually been the only demand of the workers. It has been the official demand and leaders like AITUC-president Sachdev have made clear a thousand times that this should be the focus. The initial demands of temporary workers for fixed contracts had disappeared early on.

As workers we cannot allow ourselves to postpone concrete demands and hope that they will be solved at future negotiation tables – particularly not if our general status is temporary anyway. Not only for the immediate sake, for ‘bread and butter’, but also in relation to other workers. The demand for ‘a company union and re-instatement of leaders’ creates less common grounds and potentials for generalisation than a concrete demand of, for example, 500 Rs for 8 hours, stop to double-shift and weekend work, … and all the other common problems of workers in Manesar and beyond. The likeliness of contagion will be higher in the latter. It also makes a difference if workers in a ‘privileged position’ like a booming assembly plant say that after weeks of full-on struggle they got something materially out of their enemy’s hands – or if they have to admit that they have lost a lot of money and only been offered a welfare board.

The ‘generalisation’ of a struggle obviously depends less on ‘the right demands’, but on its form: whether it leads to wider participation and active engagement of a mass of workers. Like demands, the decision about this form of struggle should not be delegated. Here, again, the formal constitution of institutionalised trade unions rather hinder ‘mass participation’ and ‘unity’ (beyond one-day shows) than encourage them. We cannot say much about the relation between the MSEU and the wider mass of Maruti workers. Facing the severe repression and general pressure we can understand that workers have the urge to defend those ‘who stick their neck out’. We don’t criticise the ‘representatives’, we question institutionalised representation and delegation. We have to ask whether ‘formal representation’ actually leads to both ‘immediate workers’ power to enforce our needs’ and to a political mass experience of workers deciding and doing themselves. We have to see that Maruti and the state operated very strategically with their arrests, suspensions and terminations (or withdrawals of them) of the representatives – and by doing so they were able to focus and ‘reign in’ the struggle around this question.

The ‘joint action committee’ which was set up first in June and was then revived during the ‘lock-out’ comprised only few Maruti workers, and if so, then the leaders of the MSEU. In June, out of a meeting of 100 in Manesar, there were only five Maruti workers, the rest were either union officials of the main trade unions or leftist supporters. Comrades noted that often there was little engagement of Maruti workers in the decisions of the ‘official steps of the struggle’ (when to demonstrate) or that in most cases the ‘agreements’ were settled without wider debate amongst the workers. Comrades noted that as long as the relation between Maruti Suzuki Manesar workers and Powertrain workers was mediated through the main union bodies, the different interests of AITUC, HMS and other institutions were actually hindering the coming together – e.g. Powertrain workers not taking parts in the early demonstrations of the Maruti workers in Manesar. Only once workers actually made contact, particularly the casual workers of both plants, they were able to push things to ‘common action’, in particular the second occupation.

10) The most ‘offensive’ and ‘potentially generalising’ leaps within the dispute, which actually questioned Marutis strategy to insulate and choke the struggle, were taken without major decrees and without following the pre-described formula of the labour laws. While officially and formally workers wanted legal recognition, their actual practice went way beyond this. Not the ‘betrayal’ of the main trade unions, but the fact that workers did not develop strong enough independent coordination during the struggle can explain its arbitrary outcome.

There were moments were workers – as part of the union or not – were able to put Maruti and the state on the back-foot. For us these leaps were:
* the first occupation in June, stopping or impacting on production of 200 nearby suppliers within days (a major potential, but largely missed chance for getting in touch with these workers);
* followed by the unrest ‘back at work’ in July and August, e.g. the wildcat strike on 28th of August;
* during ‘the lock-out’: the wildcat strike of casual workers at Munjal Showa on the 12th of September (which spread to the companies Gurgaon and Haridwar plants), the strike at Suzuki Powertrain and Motorcycles on the 14th of September;
* the decision to occupy again on 7th of October – not at last due to the pressure of 1,000 angry ‘locked-out’ temporary workers.
These were the moments were ‘things could have gone out of hand’ of the (state) management.

It is easy to discard the main trade union leadership for ‘betraying’ the unity, which they claim to symbolise:
* trade union leaders told everyone and the workers that ‘workers are victimised’ and ‘workers are in a bad spot’, while they were on occupation in June and were actually in a rather strong position
* AITUC called off the solidarity strike in June last minute;
* HMS called off the strike at Powertrain in September as soon as it hit the Gurgaon plant;
* regional AITUC president at nearby Honda plant said “We are waiting for the authorities to take initiative to resolve the issue.”, when Maruti workers occupied again in October and were actually threatened by eviction.

We think it is less about ‘betrayal’, but about a general problem with ‘trade union form of struggle’ in times of crisis. If under the general conditions trade unions confine themselves to their set limitations (within legal boundaries, confined to sector or company, based on formal representation and settlements), they will remain largely toothless. If they are toothless, the ‘improvements’ for their members will be counterweighted by the deterioration of conditions of a growing mass of other workers: all those, who remain outside of the formal boundaries which legal trade union struggle can act within. The rapid changes of the social production process (globalisation, new technologies) undermine institutionalised forms of workers organisations further. If unions decide to actually go beyond their limitations, they will face the full brunt of repression and they will have to question their very formal premises. At Maruti Suzuki workers reached this point. So instead of barking about betrayal, let’s focus on the essentials instead: independent organisation of workers. [8]

11) What could be done?

We cannot come up with any master key or all time solutions, but rather some general day-to-day considerations and suggestions. As we wrote in April 2011:

“We will put forward the issue “500 Rs for an 8-hours day – We can’t do it for less’ in Manesar Industrial Model Town. We openly say that such a slogan alone will neither free us from looking at our department or company specific conditions, nor do we have the illusion of a ‘final settlement’. It can help us to debate about concrete steps. Which steps will be specific, which steps can be common? What can we do inside the factory, what in the wider area? We have discussed the issue with some workers employed in different companies. We will put it forward both in form of hand-written posters in the area and inside these companies. We will decide about further steps according to the debate, which hopefully will emerge amongst workers in different factories.” [9]

* Let’s not delegate and postpone our concrete needs! Let’s start formulating with our co-workers what we want and look for commonalities with others. Let’s not go for promises and future settlements, enforce ‘less work, more money’ if we can, here and now.
* Let’s start with collective steps on the level of our day-to-day existence as cooperating workers or neighbours. Let’s share your experiences and debate them with other groups (in other departments, factories, sectors) and find ways to join up in common steps.
* Let’s not give out of our hands the weapon of the collective producer. Don’t let them blind you by all their talk about ‘indiscipline’ and ‘unlawfulness’. Collective ‘indiscipline’ doesn’t cost much, doesn’t need experts, hurts the management and can provide immediate relieve for us.
* Let’s try to find forms of struggle, which do not require individual people sticking their heads out too much, without leaders to be corrupted or squashed.
* Let’s create means of communication and spaces in the wider area to meet and coordinate practical activities on a larger scale, linking up with the experiences on a day-to-day group / factory level.
* Let’s find forms of collective debate and decision making during mass mobilisations or meetings. Don’t wait for calls, plans or decisions from above. Make any effort to spread ‘company struggles’ to other workers, relating to them as co-workers.
* Let’s not give the state or management too much chance to predict our next moves – break their strategy of ‘good conduct bonds’ or other traps. Don’t go for set-up provocations. Don’t stick to their normal procedures.
* Let’s not rely on the spectacle of the middle-class playgrounds (legal proceedings, media, NGO campaigners, political leaders). We should find forms of struggle and communication, which remain independent.
* Let’s make an effort to learn from the current explosion of struggle around the world (occupations of squares, strike waves, riots etc.) – let’s not treat them as ‘glorious’, but examine critically whether new forms of working class organisation and perspectives emerge. Let’s share our experiences with them in a global discussion.
* On the bases of the experiences of the global working class – as producers and as groups in struggle – let’s debate about a social alternative to car production, traffic jams, mega-cities, villages, peak oil, bio-fuels, war machines, the permanent crisis and this failing system.

Friends of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar try to support this process of working class self-organisation by taking part in the discussions amongst striking workers during the Maruti strike, by publishing a monthly workers’ newspaper and by taking part in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel, an effort of workers’ coordination in the industrial belt of Delhi. If you live in Delhi area, please be welcomed to take part. We distribute Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on ten days each month in various industrial areas around Delhi. If you are interested, please get in touch.

For more background on Faridabad Majdoor Talmel:

http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.com/p/fms-talmel.html

Footnotes:

[1]

Extensive material by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on the re-structuring process at Escorts and the role of the HMS union:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/workers-history/#fn131

Overview on the 2000/2001 dispute at Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon plant:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no8/

[2]

See comprehensive analysis by Mouvement Communiste:

http://mouvement-communiste.com/documents/MC/Booklets/BR1_China_EN_vF_Complete.pdf

[3]

Documentation of the struggle for union recognition at Honda HMSI in 2005:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no7/#fn4

[4]

Documentation of wildcat strikes / factory occupations of temporary workers at Hero Honda and Delphi:
http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no4/#fn2 http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no8/#fn4

[5]

Documentation of ‘management’s strategies’ at Faridabad Gedore Handtools factory:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/workers-history/#fn292

[6]

Industrial town in Egypt. Mass strikes in 2005 and 2008 provided impetus and organisational focus for the ‘popular movements’ emerging around Tahrir Square in 2011:

http://www.klassenlos.tk/data/pdf/egypt_interview.pdf

[7]

If we count full days of strike as full working days: 14 days occupation, 33 days of lock-out/protest camp, 14 days of 2nd occupation and strike; plus 28 days penalty wage cut for first occupation, 33 days for lock-out, 14 days for 2nd occupation

[8]

For the historical debate on the question of ‘economic’ and ‘political’ struggle of the working class:

http://libcom.org/library/class-composition-sergio-bologna

[9]

Paper on potential for wage struggles in Manesar, April 2011:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-937/

——–

*** Further Material -

* Links, Videos and Documents -

* Links for the Debate

www.radicalnotes.com
www.facebook.com/groups/WithMarutiWorkers/?ref=ts

http://kafila.org/2011/09/06/speed-and-control-at-manesar-why-is-the-maruti-suzuki-management-keeping-workers-out-of-its-factory/

* Videos

www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/truth-vs-hype-maruti-trouble-at-the-plant/214402

www.radicalnotes.com/journal/2011/10/21/working-conditions-maruti-suzuki-english-subtitles/

www.radicalnotes.com/journal/2011/10/20/video-maruti-suzukis-attempt-to-suppress-workers-struggle-subtitled/

www.radicalnotes.com/journal/2011/10/18/october-17-gurgaon-rally-in-support-of-maruti-suzuki-workers/

* Documents

17th of June Agreement
The 11 terminated workers will be taken back, but enquiry proceedings will be initiated against them and “appropriate disciplinary action” will be taken. Regular employees will be considered to have resumed work on June 17th, but actual shifts will resume from midnight on June 18th. An extra day of work on June 19th will be required to compensate for not working on June 17th.
In accordance with the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 and the standing orders of the company, workers participating in the strike are liable to a fine of three days wages for every day of work lost. However, it was agreed that, for the moment, only ten days’ wages will be deducted (ie one day’s wage for each day of the strike). The remaining amount of the fine will be waived if, and only if, the workers maintain good behaviour and discipline, and abide by the rules of the company.
In accordance with the principle of “no work, no pay”, the workers will not be paid for the days they were on strike.
The workers agreed to maintain discipline, ensure expected levels of production and not indulge in any individual or collective activities that would hamper the normal functioning of the factory. The management also agreed not to behave badly or hold a grudge against the workers.
The agreement will be taken as a final resolution of all disputes between the workers and the management.

30th of October Agreement
The details of the settlement are as below:
1. 15 workmen who have been dismissed shall be reinstated and placed under suspension and impartial inquiry will be initiated against them.
2. 18 trainees who have been terminated will be reinstated.
3. 29 workmen placed under suspension will remain under suspension and face impartial inquiry.
4. On the principle of “no work, no pay”, no workman shall be eligible for wages from August 29 until the day of reporting for duties. In addition, a penalty of “deduction of wage for one day” shall be imposed upon them.
5. All workmen shall sign the revised good conduct bond and join duties with effect from October 3.

Good Conduct Bond*
In Terms of Clause 25(3) of the Certified Standing Orders

I,………………………. S/o…………………………. Staff
no…………. do hereby execute and sign this good conduct bond
voluntarily in my own volition in accordance with Clause 25(3) of the
Certified Standing Orders. I undertake that upon joining my duties I shall give normal production in disciplined manner and that I shall not resort to go slow, intermittent stoppage of work, stay-in strike, work to rule, sabotage or otherwise indulge in any activity, which would hamper the normal production in the factory. I am aware that resorting to go slow, intermittent stoppage of work, stay-in strike, or indulging in any other activity having adverse effect on the normal production constitutes a major misconduct under the Certified Standing Orders and the punishment provided for committing such acts of misconducts includes dismissal from service without notice, under clause 30 of the Certified Standing Orders. I, therefore, do hereby agree that if, upon joining my duties, I am found
indulging in any activity such as go slow, intermittent stoppage of work, stay-in strike, work to rule, sabotage or any other activity having the effect of hampering normal production, I shall be liable to be dismissed from service as provided under the Certified Standing Orders.

Date:……………………
Signature of the workman.

“I agree that if on joining duty I am found indulging in go-slow, intermittent stoppage of work, stay-in strike, work to rule, sabotage or otherwise indulge in any activity which would hamper the normal production in the factory, I will be liable to be dismissed from service without notice, as provided under the certified standing orders.”
(i) Apply or obtain leave on a false pretext.
(ii) Lack of proper personal appearance, sanitation and cleanliness including proper grooming.
(iii) Conduct in private life prejudicial to the reputation of the company.
(iv) Remaining in a toilet for a substantially long period of time.
(v) Habitual neglect of cleanliness.

* Contribution for the Debate: A Critique of the ‘Balance-Sheet of the Maruti Suzuki Struggle’ in GurgaonWorkersNews no.41 -

We thank the comrades who took the time to write down a contribution to the debate. We did not yet find the time for a proper reply, but hope that a reply can partly be found in the political thesis of this newsletter and the Faridabad Majdoor Samachar article, following their contribution below.

ARE THE MARUTI WORKERS REALLY DEFEATED?
A DISCUSSION ON “BALANCE SHEET OF MARUTI SUZUKI WORKERS STRIKE”
Published in GurgaonWorkerNews No 41 July 9, 2011

1. We think that this is very unfortunate that the comrades who have drawn up the “balance sheet” have termed this struggle as a defeat. We have been told that “Despite the young workers’ courage and the fact that the company was hit at times of full-capacity the strike ended in a defeat for the mass of workers.” Why? They continued in that line, “They did not enforce any betterment of conditions and wages, which was their main concern.” Is it really a fact that the Maruti workers started this strike for “betterment of conditions and wages” as has been told by the comrades. No, the comrades have completely overlooked the fact that the workers did not start the strike with any such demands. The strike started spontaneously because the management started to coerce the workers to join the management controlled union. It is also a fact that the workers, either a section or whole of them, were trying to organise themselves in a separate, fighting union. Even if it is true that only a section of workers were active in organizing this new union, the fact that the new union had the backing of overwhelming majority of workmen had become evident from later facts. So, actually the strike was not at all for any demands, like wage revision or improvement of their service conditions as has been assumed by the GurgaonWorkerNews. The workers went for a strike to foil the conspiracy of the management to force them into joining the management-controlled union; the workers went for the strike to preserve their right to form their own union, they fought for their control over their own struggle. Had they achieved their demand? Definitely not completely. But, definitely they have foiled the plan of the management and they have done it by fighting alone against such a mighty management like Suzuki management and who had the complete backing of the Government of Haryana, and definitely we can well assume, the overt and covert backing of the Central Government also, which is very likely in this era of Globalisation. Yes, it is fact that the workers could not force the management to recognize the new union. Actually they did not wage their strike to do that. They did not heighten the movement for recognition of their union by management. They kept themselves within the limit to foil the conspiracy of management. They have done it and the workers are not only still organised, they have consolidated their strength and basically they have formed their union through the strike, whether they have got the formal registration or not is immaterial to us. We have seen in the meeting held just after the withdrawal of the strike, the workers themselves could recognize and appreciate this fact that not the registration, but this unity shown and achieved during this 11 day is the real union. But, unfortunately our comrades could not appreciate it. It is obvious that the struggle between the workmen and the management will continue regarding the organisation of the workers, the result of which will decide the fate of their next struggle, struggle for their economic demands. However, for the present the workers have foiled the conspiracy of the mighty Maruti management, they are still united and organised, consolidated their strength and trying to launch their next battle. These achievements are no mean achievement, considering the disintegrated, unorganized state of the working class movement through which we are passing now. The representatives of big bourgeoisie will definitely try to belittle the achievement. Should we also do likewise?

2. Another important achievement of the workers is that they have forced the management to take back the dismissed workmen. It is important because it will help to retain their strength. Had the management been able to dismiss the leadership it would have helped them to advance in their conspiracy to break the unity of the workmen, conversely by forcing the management to take back the dismissed workmen, the workers have been able to advance in the direction of organisation and also future struggle.

3. Even if the workers had not achieved anything palpable (“material gain”), even if they had to go down fighting, would their struggle lose all significance? Should the real representatives of working class think in that way? For one moment remember how many struggles of historic significance had been actually defeated in terms of achievements. No, do not think at all that we are comparing this struggle with any such struggle of historic significance. What we are trying to impress is simply the fact that for anybody who is fighting not for any improvement of the condition of working class keeping the system of exploitation intact but for the abolition of the system of exploitation as a whole, it is not important at all what gains in wages or service conditions the workers are now achieving, the only important thing to them should be whether the workers are uniting and organizing themselves more and more, whether their struggling unity and organisation is preparing them to fight the capitalists, helping them to discover their real strength, helping them to stand on their feet, build their own, independent organisation which will lead them in their struggle for the complete emancipation from the exploitation of the capitalist class. Definitely, these spontaneous, economic struggles of the workmen, especially in the narrow factory plane will not itself advance to the struggle of working class for complete emancipation. But, definitely, through these struggles the workers are awakening and from among these fighting workmen, will awaken the advance, class conscious workers of future working class struggle. Those, who are fighting for the complete emancipation of working class, should not evaluate any struggle of workers from what material gains in terms of improvements in the condition of the workers the struggle could achieve or not, but whether the struggle will help the workers to advance in the long path of struggle for complete emancipation.

4. Undoubtedly there is a tendency among the workers in general to rely on the formal recognition or registration from the Government. Definitely, it is a sign of their backwardness, which we have seen amongst the fighting workmen of different factories, that too, of different areas of the country, who think that the formal registration will help them to maintain their union, will help them to resist the attacks of the management to break their union. We know very well that the real strength of the workers lies in their struggling unity, not in any formal registration or recognition and so the workers should not have depended so much on the registration of the union. However, is it not natural that the workers will display such examples of backwardness, considering the state of the working class movement in which they are in. Is there any real Working Class party to help? To educate these fighting workers? Are there any working class organisations which have the real organic link with the masses of workers, upon whom the workers can depend and also depend in reality? No. There is no force to educate, to guide the fighting workers in their struggle, no force to develop the workers struggle into a real struggle for the complete emancipation from exploitation. The workers are struggling and also learning from the experience of their struggle and life on their own. So, in this process it is very likely that they will make mistakes, but we must keep faith on them and help them. Can we help them by belittling their achievements and inflating their weaknesses, backwardness etc?

5. The workers are learning through their experiences of struggle. Summing up their experiences of the betrayal of established parties, especially the left parties, the workmen are trying to establish their control on their organisation and struggle. The Maruti workers are also showing such signs in their struggle. They have depended somewhat on some establish parties to get the registration, but in essence maintained their independence over their struggle. This is the most significant feature in this struggle. However, the Gurgaon Workers News has rightly pointed out that “is naïve to repeat the phrase of ‘betrayal’ of the main unions.”, the workers should free themselves from any dependence on the established parties and more and more depend on their own strength. We do not know what they meant by ” ‘political’ experience of self-organisation”, but it is undoubtedly true that political consciousness of workers would have helped the workers not only to free them from the influences of the old established parties but also to free themselves from the influences of the reformist politics of these parties. In fact, the dependence of the workers on the legal structures is an apt example of such pernicious influences of reformist politics practiced by the established parties, especially the so-called ‘left’ parties. The political consciousness, more correctly, class consciousness of the workers will help them to free themselves of the pernicious influences of the politics of the establish parties. Not only will it help them to build their struggle for complete emancipation, but also help them to develop the present economic struggles. Once the workers will become conscious about the real class character of the present legal structures, the class character of the established parties, especially the so-called left parties, It will help them to free themselves from dependence on the legal structures ( like dependence on the formal recognition of the union as shown by the Maruti workmen ), to understand the conspiracy of the established parties, and also help them to form and develop their independent organisation, free from the control and influence of the established parties. But how this political consciousness will grow among the workers? Here, we face a paradox. To make the workers really politically conscious we need a real working class party. But, how can a real working class party develop without a substantial segment of class conscious workers, especially in the present situation of defeat of working class movement? So, it is very natural that the workers will fight on their own strength, with the instruments of struggle which they are building up from their past experience and they will also learn from their present experience, from the weaknesses, defeats of the present struggle. Definitely it is tortuous path, but probably inevitable also. Maruti workers are part of this struggle, part of the process of new awakening of working class, who are awakening not only in our country, but in different countries throughout the world. We must help them in this process and to do that definitely we should criticize their weaknesses, but we shall have to do that from a class point of view and obviously upholding advancements they are making. We shall have to understand the real condition of present working class movement, analyse the strength and weaknesses of their movement against this backdrop and understand the achievements and weaknesses of the workers. Otherwise, we will not be able to really help the workers in their struggle.

———

* Article in Faridabad Majdoor Samachar with Workers’ Reports after the first Factory Occupation in June -

FROM HONDA TO MARUTI SUZUKI: A WIDE ANGLE VIEW OF CORPORATE STRATEGIES

(New Series No. 277, July 2011)

WHAT THE MARUTI BALANCE SHEET SHOWS

The 300-acre Maruti Suzuki factory in Gurgaon houses three plants and produces 7 lakh cars a year. The engine plant alone has a manufacturing capacity of 7.5 lakh engines a year.

The 600-acre Maruti-Suzuki plant in Manesar started production in February 2007. This factory houses Maruti’s newest assembly plant with a capacity of 3 lakh cars a year.

Another assembly plant in this factory will begin production in March 2012 and will have a capacity of 2.5 lakh cars a year. The Suzuki Powertrain Diesel Engine factory adjoins Maruti’s Manesar factory. This is a joint venture of Suzuki Motors (70%) and Maruti-Suzuki (30%) and has a capacity of 3 lakh engines a year.

12.7 lakh Maruti-Suzuki cars were produced in 2010-11 – 2.7 lakh units more than the installed capacity of its plants – and representing almost half of all cars produced in India.

Around 1.4 lakh Maruti-Suzuki cars were exported to 120 countries in 2010-11.Maruti earned slightly more than Rs.40,419 crores from sale of its cars during 2010-11.

Maruti-Suzuki contributed a total of Rs.4290.81 crores to the national exchequer by way of excise duties, and paid Rs.820.11 crores in taxes to the Haryana Government in 2010-11.
The company declared a total share capital of Rs.144.46 crores. The value of a Rs.5/- share went up to Rs.79.22 during 2010-11.

After deducting payments to employees (Rs.703.62 crores), bank interest payments (Rs.24.41 crores), costs of raw materials and plant maintenance (Rs.27,576.13 crores) and other expenses, the company declared a net profit of Rs.2288.64 crores.

WHAT THE BALANCE SHEET DOESN’T SHOW

Maruti-Suzuki had 8,500 employees as of March 31, 2011. Only 3,200 of the total of 8,500 employees are factory workers – 2,300 at the Gurgaon factory and 950 at the Manesar factory.
Apart from these 3,200 regular workers, every other worker in the Maruti factories is a contract worker, hired through a labour contractor.

Maruti first started hiring contract workers in 1977. In 2001, after a strike at the Gurgaon factory which was probably engineered by the management and was ruthlessly crushed, 1250 regular workers were laid off. Another 1250 workers were laid off in 2003. As of 2007, the Gurgaon factory had 1,800 regular workers and 4000 contract workers. The number of contract workers at the present date is not known.

According to figures from the ILO, regular workers comprise only 15% of the Maruti-Suzuki factory workforce – 85% are contract workers. This is a much lower proportion of regular workers than in companies such as Nokia (50% regular workers) and Ford (25% regular workers).

Regular workers in the Maruti-Suzuki factory are paid an average monthly basic salary of Rs.5,300/- and an “attendance allowance” of Rs.8,900/-. An amount of Rs.2,500/- is deducted from the salary for every day of non-attendance other than earned leave.

Contract workers hired through a labour contractor are paid an average monthly wage of Rs.7,200/- (for those with an ITI diploma) and Rs.6,200/- (for those who do not have an ITI diploma). There is no provision for leave, and an amount of Rs.2,000/- per day is deducted for absence from work.

THE ARITHMETIC OF PROFIT

Assuming that none of the workers took leave, the total amount paid out by Maruti-Suzuki to their regular factory employees during 2010-11 is Rs.54.52 crores. Assuming that the number of contract workers today is 8,000 (twice that in 2007) and calculating at the higher rate (Rs.7,200/- per month) the total amount paid to the contract workers in 2010-11 is Rs.69.12 crores. The total amount paid to factory workers (Rs.123.64 crores) represents 5.4% of the profits of Rs.2,288.64 crore made by Maruti-Suzuki in the same period.

THE MARUTI FORMULA- “LEAN MANUFACTURING”

One year ago, it took a herculean effort for the Manesar plant, working two shifts on the main (automated) production line, to make 1,100 cars a day. Today, the plant rolls out 1,200 cars every day from the main line and another 150 from the manual line. How has the pace of production has been stepped up?

Maruti Production System or MPS draws learnings from its parent company Suzuki Motor Corporation’s concepts on `lean manufacturing’ under Suzuki Production System (SPS).

Setting trends in new products and achieving customer delight starts with Manufacturing Excellence and Maruti’s manufacturing excellence hinges around four important pillars-Cost, Quality, Safety and Productivity.

Every employee working on the line is ‘cost sensitive’ and functions in capacity of a Cost Manager. He is a key contributor in suggesting how to keep costs of production under control.

A product of poor quality requires repeated inspections, entails wastage in terms of repairs and replacements. “Do it right first time,” is the principle followed to avoid wastage. To ensure quality, robots were devices and deployed, especially where they reduced worker fatigue and were critical in delivering consistent quality. With consistent improvements in the plant the company was able to manufacture over 600,000 vehicles in 2006-07 with an installed capacity of just 350,000 vehicles per year.

“Home or work place; Safety takes First Place”. This has been the motto of the company where safety is concerned. Maruti attaches great significance to safety of its people and strongly advocates that safety at work place adds to quality of the products and improves productivity of the plant significantly.

In the Japanese manufacturing system, the central role is accorded, not so much to Quality, Productivity or Cost, but to Safety. When process flow, lay-out and systems are designed for maximum safety, they automatically contribute to better quality and productivity.
- from http://www.marutisuzuki.com/lean-manufacturing.aspx

The deepening economic crisis is justification enough for companies like Maruti to push even harder to cut costs and increase production. Shorn of jargon, Maruti’s much-lauded lean manufacturing system is the tried-and-tested traditional system of squeezing the workers through increasing workloads, cutting wages and benefits, undercutting investments in safety and increased casualisation of the workforce.

Here’s what lean manufacturing looks like on the factory floor.

The paintshop at the Manesar plant is a schizophrenic combination of cutting-edge robotic technology and brute physical labour. One one side are 12 painting robots. On the other, are workers carrying 25 kilo headloads of used screens up two flights of stairs and returning with a 30 kilo load of clean screens. Each worker has to carry 70-80 screens up and down the stairs, working an extra hour without pay if the job is not done by the end of the shift. The lunch-break (30 minutes) and tea break (15 minutes) are not counted as part of the working time on the shift.

The Quality Maintenance Unit employs 95 workers hired through a labour contractor. Their job includes cleaning out the tanks that hold thinners and solvents. They are always on the C-shift – from 12.30 in the night to 8.30 the next morning. Workers on the C-shift work non-stop. There are no breaks for food or tea. The food allowance of Rs.44/- that they used to be given has now been slashed to half. By the end of the shift, they are exhausted, giddy and nauseous from the chemical fumes they inhale. Workers in the Quality Maintenance Unit put in 32 to 192 hours of overtime every month, for which they are paid only Rs.28/- per hour, well short of the legal minimum of 1.5 times the normal wage. For many of these workers, the shift can extend to 17.5 hours of non-stop work without breaks or food.

“The tea break is seven minutes long. In that time, we have to run to the canteen, line up for tea and a snack, use the toilet and get back to the assembly line – and they expect us to be back with a minute to spare.”

“The line moves so fast that there’s no time even to scratch an itch…”

“The company gave us all mobiles as gifts to celebrate reaching the one crore production mark, but what’s the use – we don’t have the time to call anyone.”

WORKERS AT THE MANESAR PLANT, SPEAKING TO FMS

Casual workers hired through a labour contractor are paid an average monthly wage of Rs.7,200/- (for those with an ITI diploma) and Rs.6,200/- (for those who do not have an ITI diploma). Casual workers on the A and B shifts are entitled to free meals at the canteen. There is no provision for leave. Wages for the day, and an extra penalty of Rs.2,000/- are deducted for every absence from work. Any protests or arguments with the contractor are dealt with by immediate dismissal.

Regular workers are not much better off. Their package consists of a basic pay of Rs.5,300/-, an incentive/attendance allowance of Rs.8,900/-, a house rent allowance of Rs.1,600/-, a Dearness Allowance and an allowance for children’s education, adding up to between Rs.17,000 and 18,000/- a month. Although their contracts include provisions for paid leave and casual leaves, each day off work results in a deduction of Rs.2,200/- from the incentive allowance. The entire amount of Rs.8,900/- is forfeited if a worker takes more than four days off in a month.

Regular workers cannot be threatened by dismissal, but are harassed and humiliated by supervisors who abuse and manhandle them, arbitrarily move them from one assembly line to another, and report them to managers or the HR Unit for concocted offences.

THE STRIKE

The workers at the Manesar factory started a new union in April 2011. The membership included both regular workers and casual workers hired through labour contractors. The management refused to recognize this union. On June 4, 2011, the workers stopped work. The A shift was just ending and the workers on the B shift had all come in. Workers on the C-shift were quickly contacted over the phone and asked to join the strike. Before the management realised what was happening, more than 2,000 men – regular workers, apprentices, trainees and contract workers from all three shifts – had occupied the factory, sending the management into a complete panic.

As the strike went into its second week, the Haryana Government declared it illegal, but was unwilling to intervene as they had done in the Honda strike. Although police were stationed in the factory premises, the management was reluctant to force the workers out of the factory, given the the risk of damage to the equipment. Equally, the workers were determined to hold their ground inside the factory – everyone was aware that being forced or persuaded to vacate the premises would be the beginning of the end, as it had been for striking workers in Rico Auto, Denso, Viva Global, Harsurya Healthcare, Senden Vikas …. crushed protests that left workers far more vulnerable than before.

By the time the strike entered its tenth day, the factory had lost Rs.600 crores and Maruti shares had plummeted in value. It was obvious that the Maruti management and the government were helpless in the face of the workers’ determined refusal to surrender.

The agreement between the workers and the management that ended the strike on June 16th does not reflect this situation. No one reading this extraordinary document would guess that the workers were in a strong bargaining position while the management and the government had their backs to the wall. Instead, those who brokered this “return to normalcy” created a scenario that disempowered the workers and made it seem as if it was their inability to hold out any longer that brought them to the negotiating table.

THE AGREEMENT

The signing of the agreement and the fact that the management agreed to take back the 11 office-bearers of the new union who had been dismissed on 6 June, has been hailed as a victory for the workers by some commentators.

But the terms of the agreement suggest otherwise.

A bitter “victory”

The 11 terminated workers will be taken back, but enquiry proceedings will be initiated against them and “appropriate disciplinary action” will be taken. Regular employees will be considered to have resumed work on June 17th, but actual shifts will resume from midnight on June 18th. An extra day of work on June 19th will be required to compensate for not working on June 17th.

In accordance with the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 and the standing orders of the company, workers participating in the strike are liable to a fine of three days wages for every day of work lost. However, it was agreed that, for the moment, only ten days’ wages will be deducted (ie one day’s wage for each day of the strike). The remaining amount of the fine will be waived if, and only if, the workers maintain good behaviour and discipline, and abide by the rules of the company.

In accordance with the principle of “no work, no pay”, the workers will not be paid for the days they were on strike.

The workers agreed to maintain discipline, ensure expected levels of production and not indulge in any individual or collective activities that would hamper the normal functioning of the factory. The management also agreed not to behave badly or hold a grudge against the workers.
The agreement will be taken as a final resolution of all disputes between the workers and the management.

The story of the Maruti Suzuki strike of 2011 is very similar to that of the Honda strike of 2005. The Honda workers were persuaded by the so-called negotiators to come out of the factory. Once they did, they were mercilessly beaten by the police. By brokering this agreement, the self-appointed negotiators in the Maruti case have dealt an even more lethal blow to the workers’ struggle. The Maruti Suzuki management is exhibiting care and concern for workers’ welfare in the immediate aftermath of the strike. If the Honda case is anything to go by, this phase will be short-lived, and will be followed by a further tightening of the screws.

The 1,700 Honda regular employees who launched the strike in 2005 were workers on the factory floor. Of the 1,800 regular workers on the Honda rolls today, a large segment works as supervisors of contract workers hired through labour contractors. For instance, the motorcycle engine assembly plant at the Honda factory in Manesar is run by 4 engineers, 12 regular workers and 110 casual workers hired through a labour contracting company. Each shift in the assembly line in the no.2 motorcycle plant has 8 staff, 3 line leaders, 4 regular workers, 4 casual workers hired directly by the company and 101 contract workers hired through a labour contractor. Workers hired through labour contractors are responsible for the bulk of the production in the Honda plant. There are 6,500 such workers on the production line, and another 1500 in ancillary departments.

THE ISSUE IS GLOBAL

Regular workers and irregular workers. Casual workers employed directly by the company and contract workers employed through a labour contractor. Registered contractors and unregistered contractors. Workers who are entitled to PF and ESI, and workers who are not entitled to these benefits….

As many as 75% of the factory workers workers in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad are invisible in government statistics. The vast majority – over 80% – of these workers are paid less than the statutory minimum wage. Shifts of 12 to 18 hours are the norm, and overtime is compensated at the same rate as regular duty and not at twice the regular rate as required by law.

The situation of workers in Maruti Suzuki and Honda is mirrored in thousands of small and medium factories operating within the 300 or so square kilometres of Delhi and the NCR, that are connected to other such operations in other cities thousands of kilometres away. All of them are struggling against similar strategies of exploitation and resisting attempts to undermine solidarity and unity.

Yet, it is this globalisation of oppression that is creating the conditions for solidarity across boundaries of race and nation, across different industries, different sectors, different companies.

————-

* Short Reports by Workers in Automobile Factories in Manesar/Faridabad, Distributed by FMS Shortly before Dispute at Maruti Suzuki Broke Out -

Factory Reports – FMS no. 274, April 2011

Flash Electronics (Automobile Parts Manufacturer)
(Plot 3, 8, 9, Sector 27 B, Faridabad)
Together with the general shift of 12.5 hours there is a day shift and night shift of 12 hours each. Those workers who start at 8 am in the morning are supposed to finish at 8 pm, but often they are made to work till 1 am or 5 am next morning. On Sundays workers have to work 8 to 10 hours. There is a lot of pressure to meet production targets. The foremen, supervisors and manager swear at the helpers amongst the casual workers, the general manager also slaps them. In order to meet production targets the general manager also slapped a permanent worker. There are 60 to 70 power presses from 20 to 1,000 tons. Most of the presses are old and there are no safety devices. Most of the presses are run by helpers. On the presses, too, workers have to stay longer after 12 hours shifts, up to 21 hours. The daily pressure, the little space etc. results in many accidents. Parts break, people accidentally press the pedal while hastily taking out finished parts, pressure from the supervisor… one-two-three fingers, thumbs, fingers of both hands get cut off. Each months two-three-four workers cut their hands. If this happens the company does not bring the worker to the (official) ESI hospital, they don’t fill in the accident form, they send the worker to a private hospital in Sector 16. The tools of the power presses weigh 50 to 80 kilos and have to be removed by hand. Hands and feet get squashed. The supervisor swears at the injured worker that the injuries are his/her own fault of having been careless. The injured workers do not receive wages during time of treatment and when not able to work. The company does not pay compensation for lost fingers. When workers want to go to the ESI hospital after first treatment in the private hospital, they demand the accident report, but neither doctor nor company provide this. They also don’t provide the necessary documents for the ESI smart card. On 28th of April a worker operating a power press cut off three of his fingers. He was sent to a private hospital in sector 16 for treatment… We work 100 to 225 hours of overtime each month, paid single rate. From overtime each month 400 to 500 Rs get embezzled. Last year’s DA (inflation compensation) of July was not paid before October and this year’s January DA has not been added to wages yet (March wages). Casual workers received pay-slips in January 2011, but the overtime was not mentioned, no ESI number or PF number given. Casual workers are dismissed after seven months of employment and are rehired after two months of break. There are workers who work continuously in the factory, but their contributions for PF and ESI are not deducted for these two months (meaning that they are officially not employed). There are 100 permanent workers and 1,000 to 1,200 casual workers employed. We produce parts for two and three wheelers. There are 300 to 350 operators amongst the casual workers, the rest are hired and paid as helpers. The operators get 15 Rs per 12 hours shift for tea, 30 Rs for a 17 hours shift and 50 Rs for a 21 hours shift. The helpers get nothing. In Badarpur there is another Flash Electronics factory manufacturing auto meters and they are about to open another plant in Faridabad DLF Industrial Area.

Omega Auto Worker
(Alley no.2, Krishna Colony, Sector 25, Faridabad)
The female workers in this workshop are paid 3,500 Rs, the male workers 3,800 Rs. There is a drill, a welding machine, a lathe, a power press and three CNC machines. Women workers are also employed at the CNC machines. No ESI, no PF for the workers. We work from 8:30 am to 8:00 pm. We manufacture small metal pipes which are used as engine parts for oil and air supply. Our pipes go to Imperial Auto, a different supplier, and from there to Honda, Hero Honda and Maruti Suzuki.

Munjal Showa Worker
(Plot 26, Sector III, IMT Manesar)
There are three 8-hours shifts. After Holi there was a lack of workers. So since 21st of March workers are forced to work double-shifts of 16 hours. They don’t let workers leave, they use physical force to keep people from leaving. We manufacture shockers for Honda, Hero Honda and Yamaha. If you have to stand upright for 16 hours and handle these shockers, this causes great pain. They don’t pay extra for food. The overtime payment is 38 to 43 Rs per hour.

Track Auto Components
(Plot 21, Sector VII, IMT Manesar)
Some power presses are equipped with security devices for health and safety, but some operate with double stroke. Due to the heavy vibrations from the presses a metal part fell from some storage space and hit a worker. The injured worker had to wait, because the van which is usually meant for ambulance transport was used to transport work materials. They had to mend his foot with 12 stitches. On 18th of April a worker cut off four of his finger at a power press. If you have to start working at 7 am you have trouble to prepare your meals. In January they said that they will open a canteen on the third floor, but now they installed a sheet rolling machine there instead. The company hired 30 to 40 staff directly, 600 workers are hired through five different contractors. We manufacture parts for Maruti Suzuki, Honda and Hero Honda. The drinking water is not alright. The filter machines has been faulty for the last 8 months. The workers of the upper floors have to come to the ground floor if they need a toilet – there are always queues. On the upper floor under the roof there are 18 power presses, but not a single fan. On 26th of April Maruti Suzuki sent an audit. Those workers who operate the 160 ton power presses for Maruti parts were given ear plugs and helmets – after the Maruti reps had left the Track Auto managers took the helmets away again. The workers in the press shop often demanded ear protection, but the company does not give out any.

Honda Motorcycles and Scooter (HMSI) Worker
(Plot 1 and 2, Sector 3, IMT)
After increasing production in December last year the company again increased it in April 2011. In the motorcycle plant we had to produce 1,025 instead of 1,000 vehicles, now fixed production target is 1,100. The company swalloed the time to drink water, go to the toilet and get a breath in. Most of the production increase is enforced onto the backs of the 8,000 workers hired through contractors (this includes drivers, canteen staff), and they don’t see a paisa more for it. The illusion that some of the workers hired through contractor employed in the Manesar plant would be hired as permanents in the new Bhivari plant has imploded. The company policy of: “Use the workers and then throw them away” has proven itself clearly. The annual production target of 1.8 million bikes in 2010 has been brought to 2 million bikes in 2011. Neither the union nor the management has an open ear for the problems of the workers hired through contractor. The assembly lines are stopped by workers, sometimes here, sometimes there. On the 16th of April one production line came to a stand-still several times, instead of 1,100 bikes only 950 were produced.

SKH Worker
(Sector 8, IMT)
This factory is situated on the Maruti Suzuki premises, near the fourth gate. Around 300 workers work on two 12-hours shifts. On Sundays, too, 12-hours shifts. The company pays the overtime at single rate. They have Vishal Power Presses (800 ton model) set up in a production line, with separate die casting tools. If the first press does 1,700 piece, then the last one has to do the same amount. The machines are not supposed to stop. The ‘line must be clear’ all the time [no pieces piled up anywhere, the line moving]. There is no time for getting and drinking water or go for a piss. It’s heavy work, you have to lift the 15 kilo sheet metal by hand. If one piece gets rejected [by quality check], hell breaks lose.

GurgaonWorkersNews – Newsletter 43 (September 2011)

Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk

IMPORTANT: Struggle at Maruti Suzuki in Manesar continues!
In this newsletter we document some ‘older’ workers’ reports, amongst others on collective mass actions in the garment export factories in the Delhi industrial belt in March 2011 and some thoughts on the current situation in the call centre industry – while the struggle at Maruti Suzuki continues. We will try to give a more detailed picture in the coming issue. For current information check out: www.radicalnotes.com

In the September 2011 issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Workers’ Reports from Gurgaon/Faridabad Factories –
Short reports given to and further distributed by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar in spring 2011. Most of the accounts are from workers in the garment export industry based in Gurgaon

*** Systemic Collapse or Emancipation? On Accidents -
Commemorations for victims of two ‘accidents’ in Gurgaon and Okhla and further political questions

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Small Upsurge of ‘Spontaneous’ Collective Actions by Garment Export Workers in Okhla, Gurgaon, Manesar -
Seven reports on direct collective actions in the garment export industry in March 2011. In order to enforce the payment of the (new) minimum wage, workers in several factories went on short wildcat strikes.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company
policies

*** Shifts in the Call Centre Industry: Gurgaon Tata Workers’ Report and Global Re-Locations -
We look briefly at local and global changes in the call centre industry in relation to the current crisis. We document a call centre workers’ report from Gurgaon.

*** A Prelude? Current Problems of the Real Estate Giant DLF -
DLF was the main private company ‘which built the new Gurgaon’. This was before the global real estate bubble burst. Currently the fundaments of DLF are shaky.

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** Suggested Readings: A Few Texts for the International Revolutionary Debate -

The global and historical character of the current crisis forces us to coordinate both debate and practice ‘for workers self-emancipation’ on an international scale. Following texts are selective, but we think that they can stand as examples for ‘general theses’, ‘concrete analysis’ and ‘historical debate’ of class struggle and revolutionary movement.

On the current and historical crisis of capitalism

On capitalist crisis and challenge for communist movement

Theses on proletarianisation, food production and (food) crisis

On recent uprising in Egypt

On recent uprising in Tunisia

On recent movement in Spain

Recent contribution for revolutionary debate on Russian Revolution

Last, but not least!

To abolish the global work/war house will take more than informative exercise! If you live in Delhi area, please be welcomed to take part in Faridabad Majdoor Talmel – a workers’ coordination. We distribute Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on ten days each month in various industrial areas around Delhi. You can also participate in the workers’ meeting places which have been opened in various workers’ areas. If you are interested, please get in touch. For more background on Faridabad Majdoor Talmel:

http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.com/p/fms-talmel.html

———————

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

*** Workers’ Reports from Gurgaon/Faridabad Factories –

Shahi Export Worker
(15/1 Mathura Road, Faridabad)
The main problem in this factory is production, production, production. The production targets are way too high. At the feeder each worker has to give his production results to the foremen once every hour. If the production target is not met every hour the supervisor shouts at the workers and threatens them with dismissal. In the sewing departments, in the finishing department… at any place the targets are fixed. There is a lot of pressure, no one wants to sworn at. On 16th and 17th March, when the thread cutting workers did not meet their target before the meal break the supervisor did not allow them take the break. In the second finishing department, which is under the corrugated iron roof, a woman worker fell unconscious on 18th of March, because it was too hot and she was over-worked. How will things look like in the summer months? Last year in summer on one day 50 workers fell unconscious. On 5th of March a supervisor swore at a pressman for not having met the target – other press men surrounded the supervisor and threw him on the floor. On 12th of March the production manager slapped a supervisor for not having achieved the production target. Currently there is less work in the sewing department, but male workers in the finishing department start shift at 9 am and work till 1 am. In February the company ordered overtime on three Sundays. There is a canteen in the factory, by they offer neither meals nor tea. Most of the 2,000 workers employed here are female. If you arrive a minute late or punch out a minute too early they cut 50 Rs to 80 Rs from your wages.

Eastern Medikit Worker
Eastern Medikit has several factories in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon. The wages of the casual workers are always paid delayed. In the factory on Plot 205 in Phase I the casual workers refused to start working on 17th of March 2011, because they had not been paid their February wages. After two hours of ‘work stoppage’ the manager said that wages will be paid the next day. The company plan was to pay an advance of 500 to 1,000 Rs before Holi and the rest of the February wages after Holi, but they had to pay the whole wage on 18th of March.

Gaurav International Worker (Garments)
(Plot 236, Udyog Vihar)
Every month between 400 Rs to 500 Rs get embezzled from workers’ wages. When eight to ten workers went together to the personnel department they were told: why do you come together, come one after the other. When you go on your own they swear at you and ask you: why do you come and make a fuzz about 100 Rs or 200 Rs? Two or four of the old workers were paid the outstanding money, but the rest of us were not paid. Working times are from 9 am to 10:30 pm every day – they hold you back in order to make you work longer. Only the first two hours overtime are paid double, the rest single. We manufacture garments for GAP, Asmara and Dealers. The bosses say that when the representatives of the clients come to visit the factory we should say that there is no overtime, only one or two hours here and there and that we eat our meals at home in the evening. Apart from the 2,000 to 3,000 workers hired directly by the company there are 400 to 500 workers hired through contractor in the finishing department. They don’t get ESI or PF.

Kalamkari Worker (Garments)
(Plot 280, Udyog Vihar Phase II)
Here 400 permanent workers and 1,600 workers hired through contractors are employed. The company does not hand out a pay-slip. We work 125 hours overtime per month, the permanents are paid one and a half, the rest of the workers are paid single rate. The workers stay the same, but after six months they are put on a different pay-roll and the cards are changed in order to avoid having to make them permanent or pay them seniority bonus. The toilets are dirty.

Modelama Worker (Garments)
(Plot 417, Udyog Vihar Phase III)
Daily working time is from 9:30 am till 10:30 pm and at least 12 days per months we are held back and we work till 1 am. For the tailors and the checkers the first two hours of overtime are paid double, the rest at single rate. The other categories of workers are paid only single rate. If you take leave at 6 pm and go home, the next day you have to face verbal abuse. They only start ESI and PF once you have worked for the company for three months. If you leave the job, in order to get the PF form filled in by the company it takes a lot of running around. The helpers received 4,350 Rs in February 2011, meaning that the 155 Rs DA from January was not paid.

Stickpen Worker
(Plot 318, Udyog Vihar Phase IV)
In this factory us 150 workers produce writing pens on two 12 hours shifts. On Sundays the day-shift works 9 hours, the night shift 12 hours as usual. Overtime is paid at single rate. The helpers receive 3,200 Rs per month. Only 2 – 4 workers get ESI and PF, these are the permanent workers, the rest are casuals. The drinking water is bad. The toilets are dirty.

S.A.N. International Worker (Garments)
(Plot 203, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
We work from 9:30 am to 10:30 pm every day. Then we might have half and hour or an hour off, then again work till 1:30 am. Often, when we are caught up in work pressure they don’t even grant this break for taking meals. Then we work till 6 am the next day. On Sundays they let us go at 5 pm. The tailors work 125 hours overtime a month, the guys in the finishing department 200 hours, paid single rate. If they make you work till 1:30 am they pay 25 Rs extra for food. If you have to stay till 6 am, they pay 50 Rs. There are about 700 workers in the factory, but there is no canteen. The tailors don’t get ESI or PF. There is a lot of dirt in the drinking water. The doors of the toilets are broken. We are hired through contractor, but we don’t know who it is – it’s possible that the general manager himself is the contractor.

Sherry Clothing Worker
(Plot 400, Udyog Vihar Phase IV)
If you take one day off they cut two days from your wage. The management swears at us. The helpers are paid 4,200 Rs, the tailors are on piece-rate. The toilets are dirty.

Aaina Fashion Worker
(Plot 893, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
The helpers are paid 3,500 Rs, the tailors are on piece rate. Of 200 workers only 4 are permanents, the rest are casual workers. The boss tells us that he will close the factory, that he will shut it on the 31st of March, he tells us to look for a different job, that we should leave now and come back on the 7th of April to get our final payment. One of us went and asked: “If we lose the job, why don’t you pay us now?”, but the accountant got angry and hit him. After that the worker went to see the manager of the plant, then the director, but then the big wigs kicked him out from the factory.

Vodafon Worker
(Plot 102, Udyog Vihar Phase I)
For running their company office Vodafon has subcontracted cars and drivers. The drivers have to wait outside of the gate by day and night, during summer, winter and monsoon. Vodafon hasn’t installed a rest room for the drivers.

*** Systemic Collapse or Emancipation? On Accidents -

Two accidents in Gurgaon area earlier this year pushed the ‘constant emergency’ and the ‘fragile temporary absence of accidents’ back into our heads.

On 25th of January in Okhla industrial area a fire broke out on the fourth floor of a arment export factory. Thirty workers in the finishing department died. Most (garment) factories there operate with boilers, solvents or other chemicals. Most factories are crammed with people, most factories only have one entrance/exit, which, in many cases, is locked during working time. After the accident ‘concerned’ journalists reported: “It is surprising that despite occurrence of such a major mishap in the area, no step has been taken so far by the concerned civic agency to stop the illegal and dangerous business in the area, which the owners cannot run without having nexus with the local police. “The business at the factory resumed just a day after the mishap,” said a worker, adding, “there are more than 100 illegal garment manufacturing units in the area which are still operating without any disturbance.” “Instead of standing with us, the police is making their all possible efforts to save the owner of the factory. More than 20 people from our locality have lost their lives, but the police’s count is less than 10,” said Hamid Ali (50), who lost his 18-year-old daughter in the boiler blast.

On the 17th of February an under-construction 6-storey building collapsed on Plot 100 of Udyog Vihar Phase I Gurgaon. It took 24 hours to get the right machinery to search for victims. The road was closed till the 22nd of February and people were obstructed from observing the ‘rescue operations’. Officially two security guards were declared dead. Rumurs spread that several families had slept in the construction site that night. The construction company Millenium Construction Private Limted built a factory for Unitech Infosys. The media: “Though the officials were not certain as to what could have led to the structure’s collapse, use of sub-standard material is being investigated.”

The incidents of ‘accidents’ are neither accidental nor isolated. Regarding the question of accidents we think that systemic problems require a systemic analysis – we therefore encourage to read the following article by Amadeo Bordiga concerning the question of ‘capitalist catastrophes’:

http://libcom.org/library/murdering-dead-amadeo-bordiga-capitalism-other-disasters-antagonism

http://libcom.org/library/murder-bordiga

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Small Upsurge of ‘Spontaneous’ Collective Actions by Garment Export Workers in Okhla, Gurgaon, Manesar -

In the following we document seven short reports on collective wildcat action by workers in the garment export industry in March 2011. The strikes happened on the background of the Delhi government having increased the minimum wage on 1st of February 2011: from 5,200 Rs to the new Delhi minimum wage of 6,084 Rs for helpers, and from 6,000 to 7,410 for skilled workers. We can briefly derive three conclusions: workers don’t have and do not need an institutional union frame work to impose themselves; the structural weakness of the sector leads to a quick lash-back from the employers which can only be countered by coordinated organised efforts, e.g. when the company relocates work; piece-workers have frequently been able to impose higher rates by strike action, but we have only witnessed strikes of (monthly/daily) waged workers ‘on a mass scale’ when the official minimum wage has been increased; so far there hasn’t been a general ‘wage strike’ of that dimension without the impulse of the government increasing the rate; to our knowledge (monthly/daily) waged workers had to rely either on frequent job changes or sporadic strikes to ‘improve’ conditions; the general tendency is: increasing pressure on wages through global competition and introduction of ‘chain system’ (division of labour and mechanisation).

Om Jyoti Apparels Worker
(B-241, Okhla Phase I)
When the company gave out the two slips with overtime and attendance on 4th of March we became aware of the fact that the company will pay according to the old rate of 5,278 Rs (6,448 Rs). We demanded to be paid the new rate of 6,084 Rs (7,410 Rs). The management kicked out four workers from the factory. The mood was down… On 5th of March after the noon break we stopped production in the factory. In the finishing department there are 4 – 5 ‘incharges’ (department foremen), we encircled them and in order to escape from our anger they took refuge in the general managers office. The son of the chairman, he is the director, then said that the government had not sent the documents with the new pay rate yet and that the company will pay the new rate in March and also the area bonus for February. The company started relocation production work to NOIDA (a close by industrial area, but part of Uttar Pradesh, where the minimum wage is considerably lower). Saying that there is no more work the company dismissed 35 tailors on 15th of March and 16 workers of the cutting and finishing department on the 23rd of March… there are 250 workers left at Om Jyoti Apparels, out of which only 50 get ESI and PF.

Wearwell Worker
(B-61, Okhla Phase I)
The company paid the old minimum wage rate in February. On 11th of March workers stopped work for half an hour in order to protest. On 12th of march, when workers again stopped production after two hours the management put up a notice saying that in March the new rate will be paid and that the February area bonus will also be paid.

Orient House
(F-8, Okhla Phase I)
On 28th of February during the lunch break all workers assembled in front of the factory. They started shouting that they want to be paid the new rate. The management arrived at the gate and gave assurances that the new rate will be paid. Workers said that instead of some verbal assurances they wanted something in written. The bosses demanded that some representatives should come forward in order to negotiate. Us 700 workers said that we don’t have any representatives. The workers did not take up work… After one hour the company put up a notice saying that it will pay the new rate. (Translation from ‘Nagrik’ 16 – 31 March issue)

Shahi Export Worker
(F-88, Okhla Phase I)
In the factory there are more than 5,000 sewing machines. Most of the workers are female. When they announced the new rate the commotion amongst the workers increased. The company then put up a notice saying that the new rate will be paid.

Details Worker
(D-30, Okhla Phase I)
The company kicked out a few tailors on 25th of March after 15 days of employment. There was resistance. They then were paid their outstanding wage according to the new rate of 7,410 Rs.

Edigear International – Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Benetton Worker (Garments)
(Plot 150, sector IV, IMT Manesar)
We start working at 9:30 am and punch out at 6 pm ‘for show’ and for the official documents, actually work continues. At night from 8:45 to 9:00 pm there is a meal break, then we work till 1 am, often till 5 am. During January, February till the 18th of March 650 tailors, 100 cutters and 350 workers in the finishing department turned day and night into one. The tailors work till 1 am every other day, the 80 women workers stay from 9:30 am till 8 pm and Sundays from 8 am till 6 pm. In the finishing department the male workers worked till 1 am every night, on 14 days per months they worked till next day 5 am. In January the pressmen worked from 9:30 am till 5 am next day on 26 days. You have to turn up after your 4 1/2 hours break and start again at 9:30 am. After Holi only 11 out of 19 pressmen returned, some had fallen ill. After Holi 300 tailors, 100 finishing department worker and 40 cutters did not come back to work. We manufacture stuff for Adidas, Puma, Reebok and Benetton and there is a great demand, but currently a great lack of workers. There is no canteen in the factory. If we work till 1 am we are paid only 25 Rs extra for food, if till 5 am only 40 Rs. They should pay at least 50 Rs and 100 Rs for full-night food money. Workers currently refuse overtime and they say that the company should increase the wages, so that more workers will come and work. The workload is enormous and wages are paid delayed. On 14th of March, after February wages had not been paid, workers went inside the factory, to their workplaces, but workers did not start work, in any department. They had agreed on that amongst each other. On the next day, the 15th of March, workers again went inside, but did not move a finger. The general manager and the managing director promised that wages would be paid by the 18th of March, so work was resumed on the 16th. The bosses were told that if wages would be delayed again, people would look for a different job and they would have to find new workers. Now they said that they will pay punctually on the 7th of the month.

Sargam Worker
(Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon)
One month before Diwali the company dismissed 90 per cent of all workers in the factories on Plot 153 and 210 in Phase I, on Plot 224 in Phase IV and Plot 540 in Phase V, Gurgaon. In this way the company managed since 2008 not to pay the annual statutory bonus to 90 per cent of the workforce. In response on 14th, 15th and 16th of March workers in the Sargam factories stopped working and demanded the bonus. In the plant on Plot 210 on 16th of March at 1:30 to 2:30 pm, when production was still interrupted, management said that it will give a written announcement for the payment of the bonus. Now, on 24th of March the bosses say that they will kick everyone out tomorrow, on the 25th of March…

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company
policies

*** Shifts in the Call Centre Industry: Gurgaon Tata Workers’ Report and Global Re-Locations -

Call centres can be seen as ‘the industry of globalisation’. The came up in the 1990s as a product of Taylorisation of office work: information technology enabled to undermine the ‘individual skills’ of accountants, bank and other office workers. Contrary to what a lot of lefty ideologist thought the technological restructuring lead to a massification and concentration of work-force. By the end of the 1990s call centres went global, jumped the English speaking global wage scales from the global north to south. The patriotic populism of most of the trade unions proved helpless facing global relocations. India became the global back-office and call centre. Call centres combined ‘excess capital’ (finance, dubious personal services etc.) with an excess educated working class (students, graduates etc.). Unemployed post-graduates in Tunisia phoned for French Telecom, their Indian work-mates did the same for British Telecom. With the crisis one of the main pillars of call centre industry – the finance sector and personal services – came under pressure, so did wages in the global north. Currently we can witness rapid changes and shifts within global call centre work. In the following we give a sketchy overview on recent trends. Gurgaon is probably still the biggest call centre hub world-wide, so we are glad to document a short letter by a worker at Tata Consultancy Services based in Gurgaon.

a) Re-relocation back to the US and UK – Falling wage levels and populism
b) ‘Indian’ call centre companies opening call centres in the global north – Investing in the industrial decay (Manchester)
c) Call centre industry shifting further into the lowest wage regions, example Kashmir and Bhutan
d) Strike by call centre workers at Sparsh after relocation to small Indian town
e) Intensified outsourcing of accountancy and personnel departments and supply-chain management by major corporations
f) Squeezing space in ‘Indian call’ centres to counteract rising rent prices
g) Foreign workers in Indian call centres – Report of a worker from the USA
h) Strike by workers at Verizon in the US
i) Worker’s report from Tata Consultancy, Gurgaon

a) Re-relocation back to the US and UK – Falling wage levels and populism

There is a lot of talk about ‘on-shoring’, meaning that US or UK companies would close their call centres in India and re-open it in the US/UK. Most of these cases are actually blown up and don’t represent a major trend. The reasons given are often populist to both the patriotic sentiments and the ‘client pride’ (local accents, ‘good quality’ etc.). In general the share of IT-BPO service work done in India still increased, the global market share stood at about 55 per cent in 2010. Nevertheless there are some shifts taking place. We document some of them:

Indian call centres: not as cheap as the UK
(4th of July 2011, ET)
“But with Indian salaries expected to rise 13 per cent this year, at least one UK company has decided it’s cheaper to operate out of northern England than in Mumbai. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, New Call Telecom said it was leaving Mumbai to open a call centre in Burnley, Lancashire after being attracted by low commercial rents and cheap labour costs there. Salaries in India aren’t that cheap any more. Add to that the costs of us flying out there, hotels and software, and the costs are at an absolute parity. Mr Eastwood added he also expected to save money through better staff retention in Burnley. In the UK we will pay workers the minimum wage. Given the current economic environment, we will get good “sticky” employees who will also receive bonuses linked to performance. The new call centre will operate out of rented property and employ up to 100 people. Some days later banking giant Santander announced to bring its call centres ‘back’ to the UK: 500 jobs would be created by the switch of call centre work from India to staff based in the UK cities of Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool from this month. This year, BT has also created several hundreds of jobs in the West Midlands through the opening of a new call centre in Sandwell in the West Midlands. That investment follows a decision announced at its annual meeting two years ago that it too would be moving some offshored customer support jobs from India back the the UK. UK insurer Aviva moved back some jobs from its Indian BPO partner WNS to Norwich, UK, earlier this year. Although it did not give a reason, people familiar with the matter said it was facing quality issues.”

The following example demonstrates the ironic side of things: banking call centre relocation back from Asia because local workers are better in putting pressures of local workers in debt:

“The decision to bring the work – which had been handled from the Philippines under contract by Accenture has boosted employment at United’s offices in Warrington and Whitehaven in north-west England.
Russ Houlden, chief financial officer, said a review of United’s debt collection strategy had prompted the move – and a recognition that local staff were best positioned to deal efficiently with customers with genuine problems in meeting their bills.”

b) ‘Indian’ call centre companies opening call centres in the global north – Investing in the industrial decay (Manchester)

“On 14th of July 2011 the Indian firm Aegis announced to create 600 jobs by opening call centre in Manchester, UK. The contact centre will handle calls on behalf of Aegis clients, most of which are blue chip companies in sectors like healthcare, travel and hospitality, retail and technology.”

“As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home
By Paul Glader, 20th of May 2011
New York – Ray Capuana paces the rows of cubicles in a haggard high-rise a stone’s throw from Wall Street as his people hustle the phones and hope for a bonus check. His employees are not bond traders, though. They are call center workers. Many are African Americans without college degrees. Some lack high school diplomas. They work for a Mumbai-based company called Aegis Communications. India’s outsourcing giants – faced with rising wages at home – have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home. The pay runs $12 to $14 an hour, with bonus checks of up to $730 a month. At $12 to $14 an hour with possible monthly bonuses, workers can make four times what call center workers in India do. But Essar executives say it’s worth paying more in wages to leverage a large U.S. presence to gain contracts with banks, health-care companies and governments that require the work to be done here.”

Importing cheap labour
Actually at least in the US most of the ‘Indian’ companies import some of their work-force and undermine local wage levels.

“In the past, if, say, BNY Mellon inked an IT contract with Infosys, Infosys would handle 70 percent of the work in India and send 30 percent of its project staff to the United States on temporary work visas. These Indian workers often live in ethnic enclaves on the outskirts of a city, work long hours and earn less than an American would for the same work. Companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Genpact and Infosys are the largest users of the H-1B visa program and have collectively brought as many as 30,000 workers into the country in a year on H-1B or other visas. The workers are often paid “home-country wages” in America. “That’s as low as $8,000 a year” with housing allowances, he says. The employers own the visas – so the workers can’t bargain for wages, and if they lose their job they have to leave the country.”

c) Call centre industry shifting further into the lowest wage regions, example Kashmir and Bhutan

In the end it’s a question of wages, and wages are low when workers conditions are miserable. Aegis not only opens call centres in Manchester, they and companies like Genpact are the global tracker dogs for an ‘educated low waged work-force’. They have to enter the fields of social disintegration and decaying dictatorships:

Kashmiri call centre gives flicker of hope to a bleak future
(12th of August 2011 ET)
IS one of the world’s most volatile regions – a flashpoint between two nuclear-armed states that has become an economic backwater.
Now, India’s IT revolution has arrived in Kashmir with the opening of the state’s first call centre, in the city of Srinagar. The 230-seat centre, which handles calls mostly from customers in other parts of India. The call centre is operated by Aegis, an outsourcing company owned by Essar Group. Much of its work involves handling calls from customers in India’s booming mobile phone market, which is adding 15 million subscribers a month. With 500,000 unemployed, there is no shortage of willing job applicants, while wages in Kashmir are among the lowest in India.

Despite slowdown, BPOs look for expansion in Bhutan
(24th of August 2011, FE)
While the industry body, Nasscom, sticks to its projection of 16-18 per cent growth in IT exports in 2011-12, industry leader Genpact is all set to foray into Bhutan. “We are all set to open our office in Bhutan and we hope to start the operations soon. Tiger (NV Tyagarajan) and his team are already working on it,” said Pramod Bhasin, vice-chairman Genpact. “We believe that our country is an ideal destination to start a BPO because of the conducive atmosphere we have. To begin with, we have a stable government that is eager to set up an outsourcing industry. Apart from Genpact, we are also in talks with Wipro and few other players to start their operations in Bhutan,” said Kezang, executive director, ministry of information and communications, government of Bhutan.

d) Sparsh workers strike again!

In March 2009 workers at Sparsh call centre went on strike against low wages.

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-933/#fn2

The call centre closed and a smaller call centre was opened in a small town in Rajasthan. About two years later and several hundred kilometres in distance Sparsh again faced workers’ anger:

BSNL call centre employees on strike
(22nd of June 2011, Times of India)
AJMER: Employees of state’s first call centre – BSNL – went on strike alleging the organization for illegal deduction of money. They said they got payments lower than what was promised to them during their appointment. The management was in touch with the employees but no solution came until the evening. The call center was inaugurated by union IT and telecom state minister Sachin Pilot. About thirty people working with call centre ‘Sparsh’ walked out of the office on Friday morning. They shouted slogan against the officials. “They promised to pay Rs 5,500 at the time of appointment but they are paying us Rs 3, 700 only,” Minali, an employee, said. They also accused the HR and operation officials of harassment , “They have zero tolerance . Even when the system fails they deduct half day’s salary,” another employee said. When contacted, the officials refused to talk and said there was some misunderstanding , which they were trying to solve.

e) Intensified outsourcing of accountancy and personnel departments and supply-chain management by major corporations

Obviously it becomes more interesting when global call centre agents or back-office workers not only handle ‘global clients’ but form part of an actual global productive cooperation. For example a back-office in Gurgaon organises all shift-shedules for the German railways Deutsche Bahn. Some recent examples from Gurgaon:

“Capgemini inaugurated its new Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centre in Gurgaon, its first BPO centre in North India and sixth in India
(23rd of July 2011, FT)
Spread across an area of 35000 sq. ft, the new BPO facility in Gurgaon will increase Capgemini’s BPO’s total capacity in India to over 4500 seats. The existing BPO staff in Gurgaon will deliver Global Order Management services to Nokia Siemens Networks, a leading global enabler of communications services, to support the company’s global Supply Chain Management.”

“Genpact acquires Nissan’s HR operations
(2nd of June 2011, ET)
India’s largest BPO firm, Genpact, on Monday bagged a seven-year HR outsourcing contract from its existing client Nissan by acquiring its shared services center for human resources in Yokohama , Japan. The acquisition will boost Genpact’s presence in Japan and the center ( Nissan Human Information Service )) will be renamed as Genpact Japan Service . The amount paid for acquisition was not disclosed by Genpact. Genpact will provide payroll, benefits, staffing, training and other key HR services to Nissan’s 54,000 employees. Genpact already manages procurement for Nissan from its offices in Gurgaon and Dalian.”

f) Squeezing space in ‘Indian call’ centres to counteract rising rent prices

Apart from cutting wages, free food, bonuses etc. a lot of call centres in India, particularly in high-rent urban areas, start to reduce the work and breathing space of their workers.

“IT, ITeS firms pack more employees in confined work space to save on real estate costs
3rd of August 2011)
“Under pressure from their clients, or parent organisations, to reduce bills amid increasing rentals and employee salaries, these IT-enabled services (ITeS) firms are taking stringent measures to cut costs. They are reducing space per employee, and decreasing the size of common areas like cafeterias and conference rooms. At a clutch of ITeS companies, office space is being shared between IT workers and the call centre workforce (as the latter work the late shift to synchronise with US timings). And a few firms have even been asking employees to work out of the library. At the Gurgaon offshore office mentioned above, space per employee has been reduced to 60 sq ft from 100 sq ft; at large IT companies, 125 sq ft per employee is a standard. Workstation width has dropped from 3-4 feet earlier to 2 feet. All this is leading to severe workrelated stress. “I can’t move my hands in the fear of hurting someone. And all day one has to hear colleagues talking about issues from boyfriends to food recipes to childcare, which is not just distracting, but irritating,” says Rajsekhar. A Kumar, an employee at one Gurgaon ITeS centre, adds: “In the morning, the lifts are so packed it feels like you are travelling in a Mumbai local train.” “In the West, people come out on the street to protest when governments allow higher bird density in poultry farms. Over the past five years, rentals for IT and ITeS firms in the main metros have gone up by between 20% and 90%, according to real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle India. Salaries, on the other hand, have seen a 15-20% growth year-on-year. A junior employee with generic skills in India costs about $20 an hour, or $40,000 a year. An equivalent resource in the US comes for $60,000. A senior executive resource in India costs $30 an hour, or $60,000 a year, while an employee with a similar experience and skill in the US costs $90,000 annually. The result? Margins in business process outsourcing (BPO) have been stagnating at 18% for the past years even as revenues declined in 2011. For IT services the drop in profitability is worse: margins have plunged from 32% in 2006 to 18% in fiscal year 2011.”

g) Foreign workers in Indian call centres – Report of a worker from the USA

And obviously there are quite a few foreign workers employed in Indian call centres now. A readable account of a US based worker from Gurgaon:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization

h) Strike by workers at Verizon in the US

They have been one of the proletarian back-bones of global communication workers and one of the first call centre workers who went on a mass strike in 2000.

http://libcom.org/library/6-confrontations-pulse-collective-struggle

They had to go on strike again this year in August, after Verizon announced to cut health care and pension. We know little about whether this strike had repercussions within the global telephone lines, whether Verizon call centre work was done by invisible (and probably unknowing) ‘scabs’ at the other line. This mass work-force which is still semi-integrated with the ‘hard-ware’ workers like electricians or line-maintenance could have reached out to a global work-force. We know too little about the strike and given the lack of first-hand accounts or reports by comrades we document the conclusion of the WSWS:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pers-a22.shtml

i) Worker’s report from Tata Consultancy, Gurgaon

“Two brief accounts from Gurgaon where call centres continue with their exploitative practices
Tata, the salt to software conglomerate is no stranger to controversies. From the killing fields of Nandigram to driving the endangered Olive Ridley turtles to near extinction the Tatas have seen them and done them all. Outsourcing behemoth, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which operates in both information technology and business processing outsourcing (BPO) domains, has kept alive the age old Tata tradition of exploitation of workers – this time in Gurgaon call centres. As an employee of TCS, I have documented two such practices.
One of them relates to increasing the notice period. A notice period is the time which the employee must serve on resignation before he is relieved from company services. As per labour laws these are a part of the employment contract and cannot be increased to the disadvantage of the employees without employee consent. Rachel, an agent with TCS, narrated an incident when she found a better offer with a rival call centre and resigned from TCS. To her consternation, she was informed that her notice period had been unilaterally increased by TCS from two (as was mentioned in her employment contract with TCS) to three months. She was not informed of this change in the terms of her employment (which is completely illegal in the first place) and she came to know about it only when she had resigned. Since she had already committed on a joining date to the rival call centre – which she was unable to meet – she was left with no choice but to take back her resignation and continue working with TCS. On the first glance this may not appear to be a serious violation of employee rights. Reality however is different. Since call centres are not unionised the agents have no negotiating power. This creates fertile conditions for exploitation by the management all of which is well documented in call centre literature. The only real power that an employee possesses is to resign. By depriving the employees of this power they are further subjugated to management whims leading to possibility for pervasive exploitation.
Timesheets are meant to document the man-hours logged by agents at work. Agents fill them at the end of a day’s work. Call centres extensively use them to determine the salary payout to the agents. Abhishek, an agent with a voice based process for domestic client narrates that their team was asked to fill 8 working hours of work even as they were asked to put in 10 hours. What it meant was that they were paid for 8 hours work while they were putting 10 hours. What is more interesting is that there virtually no protests on what was a patently exploitative mandate. As Abhishek notes, the typical reaction of an agent was of docile acceptance coupled with the acknowledgement of lack of negotiating power vis-a-vis the employers.
These two instances only go to reveal the extent of exploitation of the workforce and an urgent need for unionisation in the call centre space.

PS- Some names have been changed in order to prevent the victimisation of my sources. Again this goes to show the oppressive nature of neo-liberal global capitalism that is pervasive in Gurgaon.”

*** A Prelude? Current Problems of the Real Estate Giant DLF -

The real estate company DLF was the symbol of the ‘Shining India’ of the post-1990 period, the shooting star on the stock-markets and the builder of neoliberal city Gurgaon. The most recent news about DLF might be an indicator of the current condition of the ‘Indian boom’ and will have an impact on the local (political) ruling class, which has been forged in the gold rush of ‘land deals’. We should keep an open eye at further developments.

DLF to sell 13-acre Gurgaon plot for Rs 300 crore to ease debt burden
(19th of August 2011, ET)
India’s largest developer DLF is selling a 13-acre plot in Gurgaon, Haryana, as part of its plan to ease its debt burden through asset sales. About 1 million sq ft of commercial space can be built on the plot, which is expected to fetch Rs 300 crore for the realty firm. DLF’s net debt increased by Rs 100 crore during the April-June quarter to Rs 21,524 crore. The firm had said that it plans to sell developed assets, including IT parks and its hotels business as well as hotel plots to raise Rs 7,000 crore over the next two years. The company reported that the money from the sale of non-core assets was Rs 165 crore in April-June quarter. The company is also trying to sell land in other cities such as Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai. DLF has also appointed Goldman Sachs as an advisor to sell Aman Resorts, a luxury hotel chain of 23 hotels across 12 countries it had acquired in November 2007 for $400 million. Real estate giant DLF may have to pay Rs 900 crore extra penalty if the Competition Commission of India (CCI) finds it guilty of abusing its dominant market position in three more projects in Gurgaon.