Running on empty

Twelve years ago over 400 permanent workers at Maruti’s Manesar manufacturing unit in Haryana were “discharged”, after a bout of labour violence. There were no criminal charges against them and their main contention is that there was no internal probe. For eight years, they have been fighting in the courts, and are now protesting on the streets, asking to be reinstated, reports Ashok Kumar

Likh raha hun anjam jiska kal aagaaz aayega; Thak kar na baith aye Maruti mazdoor naukri bhi milegi aur mazaa bhi aayega (I am writing about the result of what will begin tomorrow; Don’t sit down tired, O Maruti worker, you will get a job and enjoy life too) reads one of the banners hung from a red nylon rope tied between trees. Below it, on a pavement along the road to Manesar’s Industrial Model Township in Haryana, are about 20 men, mostly in their 30s. Some lie on mattresses and use their knapsacks as pillows, some play cards, others sit with their backs against the iron grille, in contemplation.

It’s a lazy November afternoon post Deepavali, and winter is in the air: there’s a chill and the National Capital Region’s customary smog. Manesar, just beyond Gurugram’s corporate look and feel, houses over 2,000 manufacturing units, including Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), Honda Motorcycle, and Scooter India Private Limited, among others.

Once permanent workers in the country’s biggest auto-maker, these men were “discharged” by the MSIL after one of the worst cases of labour unrest in the history of the Indian auto industry. It had left a Human Resources manager dead, and 90 executives injured at the company’s Manesar plant on July 18, 2012.

Though none of the people protesting faced any criminal charges for the violence, the company, asked them to leave a month after the incident, saying in a letter that the management had “lost confidence” in them and their retention “is not considered conducive to the interest of the organisation”. The ex-employees say that of the 3,000-odd workers, 2,350 were discharged.

More than 12 years later, they sit on the pavement to address the “injustice” meted out to them. They represent 350 permanent employees who are seeking reinstatement and all consequential benefits in court. Fighting a legal battle against their termination for the past eight years at the Gurugram Labour Court, these workers, under the aegis of Maruti Suzuki Struggle Committee, began an indefinite sit-in agitation on September 18.

They sit outside the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation office, more than 2 kilometres away from the factory they once worked at. While the group was given permission by the court to protest within 500 metres of Maruti’s factory, they allege that the local administration did not allow this.

MSIL is India’s largest car-manufacturing company, and was started in 1982. It was listed on the stock exchange in 2003. In 2023-24, it recorded a turnover of ₹13,49,378 million, giving out its highest ever dividend, surpassing an annual sales figure of 2 million units.

Hungry for jobs

Satish Dalal, 39, from Jhajjar district in Haryana, has aged beyond his years, and sports a white beard. He says, pessimistically, “Even a lifetime is not enough for this legal battle to end. So we decided to raise our voices on the road and launched the agitation.” Then he adds, “More than 2,000 workers, including 546 permanent ones, were terminated by the company at the stroke of a pen, without any internal probe.” More than 400 of these permanent employees did not figure in any of the FIRs or the police challans, he says.

Delivering a verdict in the case on March 10, 2017, the Gurugram trial court held 31 people guilty, out of which 13, all office-bearers of the workers’ union, were awarded life imprisonment on charges of murder, attempt to murder, destruction of evidence, and criminal conspiracy.

“Even after the verdict, little changed for us 400-odd permanent workers, with no criminal involvement, discharged by the company for absolutely no fault of ours,” says Khusiram, from Bhiwani city, in Haryana, who had been working as a fitter in Maruti for five years when the violence broke out.

Over the past 12 years, Khusiram says he has struggled to find a stable job. This too has pushed them to protest. “We have nothing more to lose. We are fighting this battle for our survival and the future of our children,” adds Khusiram.

Despite most of the men belonging to Haryana, they have been unable to find jobs in the automotive sector here. The State claims to manufacture two-thirds of India’s passenger cars, 50% of the tractors, and 60% of the motorcycles in the country, as per Invest India, a government investment promotion agency.

Many have been refused jobs, as they carried the stigma of being “sacked” Maruti workers. They have survived doing odd jobs, ranging from daily wage labour to cab driving. Some have worked as security guards and some have pushed carts to sell vegetables. They allege that after the strike, about 80% of contract workers are from outside Haryana.

Tears well up in 39-year-old Om Prakash’s eyes. A native of Haryana’s Mahendragarh, he now earns ₹15,000 per month, and has been working as a driver in a private company since 2015. The COVID-19 lockdown was the worst, recalls Om Prakash, as he lost his job and had to work at his uncle’s sweet shop to support his family of four. “If I had not lost the job at Maruti, I would have been earning around ₹1.3 lakh per month now,” he says.

Om Prakash, who worked in the company’s welding shop, claims that he was “thrice chosen as the employee of the month in his less than 11 months in Maruti”. Hoping to get his job back someday, he supports the agitation, dividing his time between his job, his family, and the protest. “I work for three days and come here for two days every week,” he says.

Another worker, Mukesh Saini, in his late 30s, from Rajasthan’s Pilani, has quit his casual job at a coal mine in Odisha to support the agitation full time. Saini, who worked in Maruti’s paint shop, says he could not find a stable job because of the stigma, and had been doing odd jobs to run the household. “We are a family of six, including my parents. Though I don’t earn enough, we somehow manage with my father’s monthly pension of ₹4,000. He used to be a secuirty guard,” he says.

Sukanth Singh (name changed to protect privacy) of Rohtak’s Lakhan Majra village in Haryana, who had been working in the welder shop for five years before he was “discharged”, began to have mental-health problems. “The doctor told us that the condition was perpetuated due to the stress caused by the sudden job loss,” says his older brother, a junior basic teacher in a Haryana government school. He adds that Sukanth has been undergoing psychiatric treatment for the past seven years at a government institute. He now works as a farmer on his ancestral agricultural land to support his family.

Diwali ‘bonus’

Satish says that barring a few who managed to land regular jobs or went abroad in search of work, most of them had their hopes pinned on getting reinstated by the company. He says that more than 200 ex-employees with their families, had gathered here for a day-long protest on October 18. “The rest too are in touch with us and supporting the agitation in their own small way to compensate for their absence,” says Satish.

Many of those who could not come to take part in the agitation, have made monetary contributions and donated rations to run the makeshift kitchen, set up under a tree close to the agitation site. Pointing at the sacks of flour, bags of vegetables, and tin containers of cooking fat, precariously balanced on piles of bricks, Khusiram says, “We have rations for more than a month, and all this is contributed by our worker friends”.

Though trade unions and workers unions active in the Gurugram-Rewari-Neemrana automotive belt have so far stayed away from the protest, old colleagues and friends from MSIL and workers from other automotive units have collected money to help them financially. “Though reinstatement is our major demand, we are also raising our voice to eliminate the contractual system. We are demanding equal pay for equal work for everyone,” he says.

Besides fighting legally in the labour court, the workers have also raised the matter with the Haryana Labour Commissioner office and three meetings have been held on the subject since August 30 this year.

Noted human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar too has expressed solidarity with the agitating workers by taking part in their protest to mark “Sangharsho Ki Diwali (Diwali of Struggles)” on November 1. She says she got involved with the trade union movement with the Maruti workers’ case while co-authoring the book Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers with Anjali Deshpande. “It is an issue of national importance and should be amicably settled,” Haksar says, adding that the company dismissing workers without an internal inquiry is “a grave violation of the Constitution and Labour Law”.

She agrees with the equal pay for equal work demand too, saying it cuts across industries, with the number of permanent workers having shrunk, and non-permanent workers broken into categories like trainees, apprentices, and contractual workers. “A number of non-permanent workers are doing exactly the same work on assembly lines along with the permanent workers, but they get a meagre ₹30,000 per month, whereas the permanent workers are earning more than a lakh,” she says.

At the November 1 Diwali agitation, she remembers a school teacher donating ₹1,000, a Honda factory worker collecting ₹51,000 from his colleagues and giving it to the protesters, a scooterist stopping near the agitation site and sharing sweets with them.

Pacing the protest

The workers’ counsel Prabir Bhattacharyya says that besides not being named in the FIR, “The Special Investigation Team constituted by the Haryana government to probe the violence also never summoned these 350 workers (who have filed the cases in the court) for interrogation. They were terminated a month after the incident purely for being active members of the union,” Bhattacharya stresses.

The IITian-turned-lawyer, who took up the case just a few months ago, says only a couple of cases have reached the “cross examination” stage over the past eight years. “The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Labour Court in five cases to expedite the hearing.” He adds that 46 workers are now mulling moving the High Court seeking direction to expedite their cases.

The company, in its reply to the court, however, has maintained that the services of these workers were terminated by way of “discharge without attaching any stigma”. Maruti argued that “It is not a case of dismissal based upon misconduct but is a case of discharge simpliciter (as per the contract).” The company declined to comment for this report, as they said the matter is sub judice.

At the protest site, one of the workers sings this song: “Hum mehnatkash, hum hai mazdoor; samjho na tum humko majboor. Dharm bhale ho alag alag, alag alag ho apni jat; hum milkar ek saath ladege, badlenge itihas (We are hardworking people, we are labourers; don’t imagine we are helpless. Our religions may be different, our castes may be different, but we will fight together; we will change history).

Published - November 17, 2024 06:39 pm IST