On January 5, a new union was born: the Maruti Suzuki Non-permanent Workers Sangh, marking a unique event in the history of working class struggles and the trade union movement.
The union was an initiative by dismissed permanent workers of Maruti Suzuki an act of solidarity by those who had no jobs, or incomes and more importantly, without the support of major trade unions.
I was present on the occasion as an observer.
The members of Maruti Suzuki Sangharsh Committee were permanent workers who had been dismissed by the company in 2012 in violation of labour laws. Since then, these workers had kept up their fight for their jobs as well as the non-permanent workers.
The Sangharsh, or struggle, committee had booked a place in old Gurgaon and were not expecting more than a hundred people. But by 11.30 am, more than a thousand had turned with the numbers swelling to over 3,000.
In the sea of the faces of young men, none was above the age of 30. Many had mobile phones to record the speeches of the trade union leaders. Their eyes were fixed on the speaker as they followed every word, nodding in agreement, a shadow of anguish on their faces as he spoke of their pain followed by an outburst of clapping to support every suggestion for future struggles.
The Sangharsh Committee has been on a dharna, or demonstration, since September 18. The focus has been on the permanent workers getting their jobs or compensation for wrongful dismissal, but the committee has also continued to take up the demands of the non-permanent workers at Maruti Suzuki plants in Gurgaon and Manesar. The leaflets, pamphlets and posters they have been publishing since the beginning of the protest reflects this solidarity. It is a part of the history of the Maruti-Suzuki workers’ struggles since 2011 when the company increasingly began employing contract workers.
After the protest and subsequent violence in July 2012, in which a manager was killed and more than 100 workers were arrested, the Maruti Suzuki management abolished the contract labour system. This was replaced by a diabolical system of contractual workers or fixed-term employment. The management tried to break this solidarity between permanent and non-permanent workers by increasing the wages of the permanent workers to Rs 1,30,000 while non-permanent workers get less than half or even less for the same work.
The increase in the wages of permanent workers did not come from the profits the company made but from depriving 83% of the workforce of permanent jobs. The number of permanent workers at the Maruti Suzuki plants is just 17% and the remaining 83,000 workers are non-permanent, earning between Rs 12,000 to maximum of Rs 30,000.
This difference in wages has been justified by creating various categories of workers: apprentice, temporary worker 1, 2 and 3, casual worker C1 and C2, and then the MST – multi-skilled technician. The management also controlled the union of permanent workers, because the union does not represent the interests of non-permanent workers.
The Sangharsh Committee had been researching the condition of non-permanent workers and discovered that there are over 30,000 men who worked as non-permanent workers but were never made permanent.
Already, the Sangharsh Committee had raised various demands on behalf of the non-permanent workers working within the factory. The demand letter, sent to the labour commissioner, was read out at the meeting by Surendra Kaushik, a member of the Sangharsh Committee.
After that, Amit Chakroborty, a trade union leader who has been working with Maruti Suzuki workers since 2012, read out a letter of demands on behalf of all non-permanent workers. One of the demands is for Maruti Suzuki to hire workers for its new factory at Kharkhoda in Sonipat from this pool of 30,000 workers who have worked with the company. But the most basic demand, rooted in principes of natural justice and embedded in labour law, is equal pay for equal work.
The non-permanent workers do the same work – several stations do not have any permanent workers – after barely weeks of training but are paid a pittance. After seven months – one year in case of the apprentice and two years in case of the multi-skilled technician – the temporary worker (TW 1, 2, 3) is thrown out and another set of temporary workers are hired for seven months.
Several workers told their stories and said that Maruti Suzuki had sucked joy out of their lives and trampled on their dreams of getting a job. A worker from Jharkhand had got a job as TW 1 in 2017. He was fired after seven months. After a few months, he was recalled, this time as a TW2 but was fired again after seven months. The third time, he was asked to join as a TW3. He thought he would be made permanent and finally be able to support his family, which lived in extreme poverty in a mud house. But his hopes were dashed and he is now unemployed.
Another worker said that he got married but when he did not get a permanent job, he cried outside the Maruti factory gates. But now, he stood straight and said he was ready to fight for his right to a job.
Khushi Ram, a member of the Sangharsh Committee who has been protesting since September, said that they would support the struggles of the non-permanent workers but they themselves had to fight their battle. They would have to speak for themselves before the labour commissioner on January 10, Ram said, to loud applause in agreement.
What about the government?
The Centre and automobile industry representatives formulated the Automotive Mission Plan for 2047, aimed at paving the way for India to become an advanced industrial power.
The Automotive Mission Plan 2016-’26, outlining the vision of the Indian government and the Indian automobile industry, promised to create 65 million direct and indirect jobs over the next decade. But this plan neglected to mention that the jobs would not be permanent and would often pay below statutory minimum wages. The most dangerous deception is firing and rehiring a worker – as a TW1 for seven months and then re-employed after four months as TW2 and finally dismissed and hired again as TW3 – is counted as creating three jobs.
The dismissed permanent workers have invited non-permanent workers to join their protest till January 10. They have provided the non-permanent workers basic shelter under a bamboo structure, shared their food and are teaching them the basics of union politics. They have made it clear that the struggle is entirely peaceful and not in violation of any law.
But who will discipline transnational companies that have no respect for the laws of the land and even less for the people?
These non-permanent workers are not revolutionaries seeking change in society – all they want is a decent job to support their families. Is that too much to ask for in a country about to celebrate Republic Day, marking the Constitution coming into effect with the promise that the government would be run for people?
(Nandita Haksar is a human rights lawyer and an award-winning author. She is the co-author along with Anjali Deshpande of Japanese Management Indian Resistance: The Struggle of the Maruti Suzuki Workers, Speaking Tiger, 2023. Courtesy: Scroll.in, an Indian digital news publication, whose English edition is edited by Naresh Fernandes.)
[Here is an extract from a related article: The Reality of Maruti Suzuki’s Employment Practices also by Nandita Haksar]
Gautam’s journey: A case study in inequality
Gautam, a graduate of Industrial Training Institute, Narnaul in Haryana explained to me how the system of non-permanent workers functioned and how absolutely unfair and unjust it was.
Gautam was recruited on the campus after he passed a written exam and taken in as an apprentice in 2018. He was sent to the Maruti training school where they did a document verification, biometric identification and issued him an identity card and did his medical examination.
Then began a week of training. The first day was spent in telling the batch of apprentices the history of Maruti from the time it started and produced its first Maruti 800 car and how the Maruti Suzuki partnership began.
Then, for three days, they gave oral lectures and showed videos of the car manufacturing process. They emphasised the importance of working in accordance with the strict timing and by the stopwatch. They also explained the safety precautions the worker should take.
After that, he was sent to the Manesar plant and put in the casting workshop. For the first two or three days, he was shown how to work by another non-permanent worker, whose contract was ending.
He was not taught how the robots or the other machines worked; those skills were left to a permanent worker. The actual work was done by three workers who were all non-permanent workers, either TW 1 or 2 and he being the apprentice.
His salary was Rs 13,000 of which the government gives Rs 10,000. He was not given any Provident Fund (PF) or Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) benefits. After one year, he was given a letter wishing him a “bright future” and sent home.
Gautam was not given an assurance of being called again and he just waited for a call or message. After three months of sitting idle, he was told to join the weld shop in Gurugram. This time, he worked in the assembly line and his work was to fix the hinge in the door of the cars.
Once again, he was told how to work by a temporary worker.
Gautam learnt to work and think in seconds because he had to fix the hinge every 30 seconds. He also got used to having a tea break of seven and a half minutes in which he had to have tea and a snack, rush to the toilet and come back in time to put on his safety gear and get back to work.
As a temporary worker, he got Rs 26,00 but since the PF and ESI was deducted, he got Rs 24,000 in hand.
After working for seven months, his contract ended and he was given a letter stating that he had worked for seven months. Once again, Gautam was back at home and jobless, waiting and hoping he would get a permanent job in Maruti Suzuki. There was no feedback on his performance or how they had judged him.
After an excruciating wait of four months, he was sent a message that he could join the company as a temporary worker, this time as TW 2.
Not told whether it would lead to a permanent job, he had no idea. If your performance is good, then they will call you. Once again, the work was done by temporary workers and they had the same shifts as the permanent workers.
Once again, his contract ended after seven months.
This time, he waited for one year. He got a call asking him to take the examination for the post of a permanent worker. He gave the exam which he said was quite easy. But to his utter disappointment, he was not selected, not told how well or poorly he had done in the exam, or what his score or the cut off score was. He was just told he had not passed the exam.
According to Maruti Suzuki records, they had employed three workers when, in fact, they had employed one worker three times over as non-permanent worker.
Gautam went around looking for another job in another company, showing them his certificates from Maruti Suzuki and each company said that those certificates were worthless. Finally, he got a job at a factory called Gronz with a salary of Rs 13,610. He left because he could not live on the salary. Gautam is now 27 years old with no job.
Demands for justice and upholding constitutional values
There are some 30,000 workers like Gautam who have worked in Maruti Suzuki as non-permanent workers. And now Maruti Suzuki is opening a new factory in Kharkhoda, Sonipat. The Maruti Suzuki non-permanent workers are demanding that the permanent workers to be taken to the Kharkhoda factory should be taken from the pool of some 30,000 workers who have worked as non-permanent workers with them already.
The non-permanent workers of Maruti Suzuki have a charter of demands, which includes that the principle of equal pay for equal work must be implemented and that they must be able to represent their interests because at present, the union represents only the interest of the permanent workers.
While the Japanese managing director Hisashi Takeuchi earns an annual salary of more than Rs 51 crore, the non-permanent workers earn anywhere between Rs 12,000 to Rs 30,000 monthly. After the struggles, the permanent workers earn around Rs 1.3 lakh.
It would be entirely in the spirit of the Constitution that the voices of the people be heard by the government and that transnational companies like Maruti Suzuki be bound by constitutional values. If the just and fair demands of “the People” are not heard, then the people will have the right to assert their rights and enforce them by means available to them. For the time being, the Maruti Suzuki non-permanent workers’ union has announced that they will struggle for their rights through legal and constitutional means, respecting the law and hoping the government will respond.
(Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.)
