Appeal letter to All Trade Unions, Organisations and Individuals

We, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), Suzuki Powertrain India Employees Union (SPIEU) and Suzuki Motorcycle India Employees Union (SMIEU), have been on strike in our respective plants in Gurgaon-Manesar from the 7th of October, 2011, demanding our right to respectable and non-precarious employment and unionization. Our movement stands at a crucial juncture today, we therefore send this appeal to all the labouring people of the country and beyond, the trade unions and all other sections of society which have stood with us in solidarity to come forward with renewed vigour to take this movement forward.

Our struggle is not a struggle for a mere wage-hike of any one section of workers, but is a struggle for our dignity and right to organise. We struggle also more importantly for the contract workers among us, whose insecurity and precarious condition of existence is a burning issue before the entire labouring people of the country today, which puts the very framing of the available labour laws into question. We, permanent and contract workers, have and do stand united in this struggle.

To break our unity and resolve, the management of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Manesar is continuing to indulge in anti-worker activities and increasingly harass us with the absolute complicity of the state administration. The management from began violating the terms of the last agreement from the very next day of our calling off the 33day long strike continuing from August 29th till a settlement was reached on the 30th September. Going back on its word of treating the workers with respect, it has on the contrary been acting with vengeance, trying to create divisions among us. On the workers reporting for duty the day after the strike, the management flatly refused to let the over 1,200 contract workers enter the factory, so as to divide the unity between permanent and contract workers that this movement has achieved. It shuffled permanent workers from their workstations so that allegations of `production sabotage’ could be put on us. Such a shuffling of skilled workers, acustomed to and specialized at their specific tasks is far from being conducive to optimal production in the factory. Such a move therefore makes evident that fulling production targets are not a priority with the management at this point. The already inadequate bus service was also stopped to further harass us. Later contractors on the behest of the management used bouncers who threatened and attacked us recently in front of the factory gate on the morning of 7th Oct, this incident took a more blatant aspect when some goons came and beat us up at the factory gate on the 8th and threatened us for our lives. They even attempted to actualise their threat by coming with guns inside the Suzuki Motorcycle plant on the 9th morning and firing on our comrades there. All legal and illegal means have been used by the management to break our resolve and unity forged during the struggle in June and then again in August-September.

The state and central government is acting hand-in-glove with the management. Earlier it merely gave us empty promises after the company broke the spirit of the settlement by acting in anti-worker bad faith. Ever since we have been on strike due to circumstances created by the management, it has been issuing us show-cause notices instead of acting against the company which is habitually reneging on its promises and violating all labour laws, having turned all their instrument to implement justice to break our fight for a just cause. The number of police personnel, stationed inside the factory increased first to 1,500 and soon to 2,500. Having tried to push us into starvation by occupying the canteen and dismantling our set-up to cook food for those inside the factories, the management soon also blocked the water supply and locked up the toilets. Given that it had no problem in arresting our leaders last month on false charges, the attacks on some of our fellow workers and the brutal lathi-charge on the workers of Honda in 2005, we also think that brutal repressive force could be used any time on us.

With the company and the state acting together to control and oppress us, we feel the need to make a renewed appeal to all to extend and be part of our collective struggle. Since our struggle began, all workers, various Trade Unions and other sections of society have stood strongly by us. But now, the struggle in Maruti Suzuki has emerged as the concrete struggle of the around 8000 workers of the four plants of Suzuki group- Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., Suzuki Powertrain India Ltd., Suzuki Castings, Suzuki Motorcycle India Ltd. On 7th October, workers of another eight plants in IMT had also gone on a one day tool down strike in support.

WE, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), Suzuki Powertrain India Employees Union (SPIEU) and Suzuki Motorcycle India Employees Union (SMIEU) continue to sit on strike at our factory gates. Our movement has been able to achieve an unprecedented unity among permanent and contract workers, local and migrant workers and workers of all our plants forged in course of struggle by the initiative of all struggling workers; this we consider to be our greatest strength and are resolved to take this strength forward. We shall not relent until our demands are met and all workers are taken back unconditionally. No degree of sacrifice can deter us from seeing this fight to the end.

We appeal to all the workers and Trade Unions to extend concrete support in our struggle with both solidarity actions in their own factories, areas and before their own state governments and by contacting us and fighting this struggle with us. Even if a single worker sticks one poster on the wall facing an oppressive management, we consider it a concrete act of solidarity. The possibility that this strike and these solidarity actions are throwing up can lay the foundation of a new and more advanced phase of workers movement in our country, such that can compel each and every government and arrogant management to think many times before taking any anti-worker measure in the future.

In face of the brutal hand twisting of the workers sitting-in on strike in the Maruti Suzuki plant, by holding food and water ransom, we are now continuing our struggle outside our respective factory gates. It has now become evident that the Haryana administration is preparing for taking brutal and violent steps to smash our movement and disperse us from here. Such an assault will not just be on us but the right of all working people and we expect that would become the begininng of unprecedented protests in all corners and among all progressive sections of the country.

United in Struggle.
Shiv Kumar, General Secretary, MSEU
on behalf of MSEU, SPIEU and SMIEU

October 15, 2011

MSEU Press Release on October 15

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Workers of Maruti Suzuki Renew their Struggle : It’s time to learn from past errors and make it a broad movement.

by Bigul Mazdoor Dasta

Not a week has passed since the 33 day long lockout in the Manesar plant of India’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki, that the workers are once again on path of struggle. Since the afternoon of October 7, around 2000 permanent, contractual and trainee workers have struck work and started a sit-in inside the factory premises. Outside the factory gates hundreds of contractual workers too are sitting on a ‘dharna’ since Friday. Showing solidarity with the Maruti workers, workers of other two factories of Suzuki company in the vicinity namely Suzuki Powertrain and Suzuki Motorcycles too went on strike as a result of which production has been stalled at these three factories including Maruti. Production in some other factories of Manesar was affected as a result of work stoppage by workers. All workers of shift ‘A’ and ‘B’ have joined the sit-in strike. Only workers of shift ‘C’, who are very less in number, are outside the factory gates but they too are with the strike.

It was clear from the day (1st October) when workers were coerced to sign an agreement which totally was in favour of the management that the workers will have to remain prepared for another round of attacks. The true face of Maruti management came into picture on the very next day when they refused to take back the contractual workers who had remained away from work during the lockout. Maruti management promised to take back the contractual workers on October 7 after the intervention of the Labor Department when this issue was raised by the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union. But on Friday when they went for the work they were stopped on the factory gates and were refused to enter. After this they started a ’sit-in’ outside the factory gate.

The management went on to use cheap tactics to harass the permanent workers too. Many workers were shifted to different areas of the shop floor or handed new work on the assembly lines for which they neither have any experience nor training. And when this started affecting the production, the workers were threatened that they are intentionally y ‘going slow’ to hamper production. Media is being fed with reports of “sabotage” by the workers. It should be kept in mind that the ‘good conduct bond’ which the management forced the workers to sign, says that if any worker ‘goes slow’ or hampers the production process in any way, he can be thrown out without notice. The 44 permanent workers which are still under suspension were ousted on the same charges. To further harass the workers the bus service for the workers was withdrawn from October 3. As result of this it became difficult for the workers to reach on time as most of them have to travel long distances and the state of public transport in Gurgaon is very bad. Remember as per the semi-fascist rules of Suzuki management, up to Rs. 1500 can be deducted from the worker’s wages if he is late by only a few minutes.

After seeing what happened with the contractual workers, the permanent workers too realized that the management is hell bent on crushing them and the management is not going to adhere to its assurance of not being vindictive towards the workers. After this they decided to go on strike. Sonu Gujjar, president of Maruti Suzuki Employee’s Union said that workers have rejected the agreement signed on 1st October, as the management has first breached the agreement. There are four main immediate demands of the striking workers – 1. All contract workers should be taken back on work. 2. To immediately take back the 44 suspended workers. 3. To stop the harassment of workers by arbitrary changes in their work areas. 4. Bus service to be restored.

Labor Department officials were in “talks” with management since Friday, but the management is adamant on its stance. Haryana government is again parroting the Suzuki officials and has started to threaten the workers.

Indeed, these developments were not totally unexpected. The workers did not achieve anything in the agreement signed to end the 33 day lock-out. They had to accept the agreement from a position which was even weaker than when they started their protest on 29th August. The management shrewdly played the tiring out game during the month-long agitation and then coerced the workers with full help from Haryana government to sign the agreement. Workers had to sign the same “Good Conduct Bond” against which they started their struggle. Moreover, management denied to take back any of the 44 regular workers . Again, there was no talk about the issues of the Union and contract workers. In fact, the management had shown some flexibility during talks on September 16-17-18, but after that they toughened their attitude noting the inner weakness and directionlessness of movement . Most of the workers were already unhappy with this agreement and the management added fuel to it by their vindictive tactics. Thus, the workers’ embarking upon the path of struggle once again was just a matter of time.

Bigul Mazdoor Dasta has been appealing to Maruti workers from the time of their previous struggle that the only way to launch an effective fight is to make it a broad-based one. We talked frequently to their leadership and with a large number of workers and we also distributed three letters saying that their fight is not confined to some corrupt officials of the management and of local labour department, as many of the workers were thinking. Their fight is against the Suzuki Company, Haryana Government and the neoliberal policies. Japanese companies are infamous all over the globe for their fascistic management techniques and they are ready to any extent to crush the workers. In order to make Haryana a favored destination for foreign investment, the Haryana government has constantly shown its blatantly anti-worker face, be it the brutal suppression of 2006 Honda workers strike or other recent workers’ struggles. The economic policies being pushed through by the Indian government cannot be implemented without the super-exploitation of the workers. They must also know that workers’ rights, including the right to form a union are under attack all over the world. So this assault on the rights of Maruti workers can be fought back only through a broad-based working class unity and by conducting the struggle in a planned and organised manner.

We constantly appealed to the Maruti Suzuki workers that they must decide a concrete action program for their agitation and call upon the lakhs of workers working in different factories of Gurgaon-Manesar Industrial belt. We also put forward some concrete suggestions to conduct the struggle in a phased manner. We suggested that a ‘Mazdoor Satyagrah’ should be launched led by the Maruti Suzuki workers and it should be made into a broad struggle against the increasing tyranny and strong arm tactics by management and administration, violation of union rights, corruption in the labour department and super exploitation of workers in the entire Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal-Bhivadi industrial belt. Apart from sending formal letters by the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union seeking support to all unions in the area, workers should form squads and conduct factory gate meetings and door to door campaigns in worker colonies to enlist their support. Thousands of leaflets and posters should be printed. In the next phase of the struggle, all the workers in the National Capital Region should be called upon to participate in the struggle. All the workers in the automobile sector of the country must be called upon to raise their voice against the oppressive and inhumane working conditions at their respective workplaces. An appeal should be issued to automobile unions all over the world to lend support to this struggle. We told the Maruti workers that we have seen from experience while distributing leaflets and holding street corner meetings in their support that their agitation has a widespread support but a well planned action program and active mobilization is needed in order to convert this silent support into a force of struggle.

The issues raised by the Maruti workers are common issues of workers in Gurgaon region – in all the factories workers face forced overtime, inhuman workloads, salary cuts , contractualization, violation of union rights and are forced to work in a slave like environment and they have fought from time to time for these demands. Even basic labour laws are not followed anywhere. If the Maruti workers had given a call to the lakhs of workers working in the vast industrial belt and if the central trade unions had supported it genuinely and with their full strength, a mass mobilization would have been possible. However, the central unions neither had any intentions of developing it as a militant movement nor they have any wherewithal left in them to do so. They wrote articles hailing the struggle in their party organs or TU bulletins while their local leadership was busy in the game of one-upmanship. But sadly the leadership of Maruti workers was also unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation and the importance of conducting the struggle in a planned and organised manner.

The developments of the last few days have once again shown that the workers of Maruti Suzuki must prepare themselves for a difficult and broad fight ahead. The kind of support they got from workers of other factories on the very first day has shown that if they are able to reach out to the large sections of working class population with a concrete call this movement can be developed into a broad-based struggle. This alone can ensure victory for them

Source: Sanhati

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