'We cannot go back to our villages'

Workers at Nokia's Sriperumbudur factory, many of whom belong to poor families from villages, find their livelihoods jeopardised by the company's tax disputes

In 2007, Rukmani (name changed), a 26-year-old girl hailing from a village deep in southern Tamil Nadu, was approached by a private consultant while she was studying for her bachelor's degree in science in Chennai. The consultant wanted her to work with Nokia and offered her a salary of Rs 6,000 a month. The Nokia name was so well known that Rukmani did not even think twice before agreeing to the proposition. She did not have anyone back home to support and with the company itself offering transportation and food, Rukmani reckoned she could save Rs 4,000 every month for any future needs. She had the basic qualification, which was 60 per cent in the Class XII exams, and so she chucked up the pursuit of a degree and joined Nokia's factory at Sriperumbudur, around 45 km from Chennai. She got married four years ago, and even though her husband did not have a regular job, her earnings were adequate.

Today, Rukmani is facing an uncertain future at the factory that manufactures Nokia's mobile handsets. Around 8,000 employees there, 60 per cent of whom are women, have been affected by the Delhi High Court's directive to the tax authorities to freeze Nokia India's assets, including the Sriperumbudur facility, in the Rs 21,153-crore tax case related to violation of tax norms while making royalty payments to the parent company in Finland since 2006.

The turn in their fortunes is all the more disappointing for the employees because they looked forward to an assured future with the factory being part of the acquisitions by Microsoft Inc, which had bought the handsets and devices business of Nokia in a Euro 5.4-billion deal. Unless Nokia resolves the tax dispute, the Sriperumbudur plant cannot be transferred to Microsoft. In such an eventuality, the factory could end up being only a contractual supplier of handsets to Microsoft, that too for a limited period.

As it is, the tax dispute is affecting the demand for Nokia phones, and production is down at the Sriperumbudur factory. Some of the manufacturing has also been allocated to other factories, prompting the Nokia management in Chennai to contemplate retrenchment of staff to the shock of the employees.

On March 31, members of the Nokia India Employees Union sat on a day-long hunger strike near Chennai's Chepauk Stadium. The union had estimated that around 500 people would turn up for the protest, but over 2,500 anxious people, many of them women, including Rukmani, congregated at the protest venue.

"If you take Nokia away and the years we have spent here, we have nothing left. All of us come from poor families and most of us are from rural places," says Saravana Kumar, president of the Nokia India Employees Union, which is backed by Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the left-affiliated trade union. Kumar, in his late 20s, is leading the protest and legal battles to protect their rights as employees. Kumar wants to be impleaded as an interested party in the case in the Delhi High Court.

At Sriperumbudur, Nokia has manufactured around 800 million handsets. Five years ago, when it reached the milestone of 500 million handsets, the company rewarded each of its young employees with a Rs 6,000 mobile phone. But the company's dominance in the market began to flag soon after with the entry of cheaper mobile phones from domestic manufacturers as well as phones based on the Android operating system. The Chennai facility was turned into the manufacturing hub of Nokia's new operating software, Asha. The Asha phones were entirely produced in India and exported to markets abroad. The range became a success and saved the Finnish brand from being wiped out. A grateful management celebrated this with a party in which all the employees were served biryani, recalls an employee who wanted to be anonymous.

Many early employees were paid a monthly sum of around Rs 3,500, and Rukmini alleges that the recruiting agent had cheated them by promising higher salaries than stipulated by the company. There were some problems related to salaries and increments, but most of them had been resolved in the past two years. "Last year, we agreed on a proper wage settlement with the management," says Kumar. "The young employees are just starting their lives now, and with the new salary structure they were looking forward to a bright future."

To save money, most factory workers choose to stay in the villages, where the rents are as low as Rs 500. Every day, Nokia buses travel up to 100 km from the factory to ferry the workers. One such village is Tiruvelankadu. It is a nondescript village, its only claim to fame being the Sivan temple that is visited by a lot of devotees. "In a way, the company's bus is an icon for the people and we men in blue are respected by the villagers," says Babu, a Nokia employee, referring to the blue uniform that all factory workers wear.

Being an employee at Nokia's factory has its advantages. A Suresh (name changed) got engaged to a girl in January. Though less educated than his fiancee, he was accepted by her family because he worked at the Sriperumbudur factory. More importantly, he was set to soon be on the rolls of Microsoft. These days, Suresh lives an angst-filled life, unsure if his job is secure. If he loses his job, his marriage plans will be in the doldrums.

An air of suspicion chracterises the atmosphere at the factory. The workers now question every move that the company and the government take. They resent the lack of clear answers. If their apprehensions are misplaced, they say, at least the related parties should have addressed their anxieties.

They have a lot of questions to ask: why didn't the government take action against Nokia all this while? Why did the company create a separate sales entity, Nokia India Sales Pvt Ltd, in addition to the already existing Nokia India entity? Was it to ensure that this division could be transferred to Microsoft? Why did the tax watchdogs freeze the assets of only the manufacturing division and not of the sales entity? Would it not help the company to transfer the sales division, which would help Microsoft, while retaining the factory in which thousands of lives are enmeshed? Why didn't the Nokia management take steps to implement the orders of the Delhi High Court and go ahead with the transfer the Indian assets to Microsoft by March 31 as stipulated? The company officials have offered no responses to such questions.

"Our job is not that of a skilled labourer - we simply assemble mobile phones and that is all we know. Who will give us another job?" asks a young employee at the protest in Chennai. "We cannot go back to our villages since our families actually expect us to send them money. Our parents and elders have stopped toiling in the fields and markets because we had started earning." Another employee too worries about losing his current job and not finding another. "Everybody looks for graduates or candidates with a diploma from the Industrial Training Institute (ITI). Where do we go?" he asks.

The workers' union feels that the tax dispute should be resolved quickly by the Centre and Nokia without jeopardising the security of the employees. And yet, there is no assurance yet of such a thing happening. The deadline of March 31 for the resolution of the case has slipped by and every new day brings new fears for the employees. "The future is a big question mark. I am trying not to think about it," says Rukmani. There are thousands in Sriperumbudur who share her fears.