Sreelatha Menon: A widening chasm

EAR TO THE GROUND

Behind the murder of a company’s chief executive in Noida lies a bigger story, about a growing chasm between businessmen and factory workers.

About 200 permanent workers of the Italian firm Graziano Trasmissioni are either in jail or underground, following the murder of the company’s managing director last week, at the hands of agitating workers.

But the scene outside the factory gates tells of other realities. Casual workers queue up at the gates in Greater Noida, in Uttar Pradesh, seeking to rejoin after their break period. The presence of the police and the media at the gates doesn’t seem to bother them.

The company has about 500 such workers, some of whom replaced the 200 permanent workers who had been dismissed. These workers are less likely to cause trouble to the company by unionising or making demands on the management. If they don’t like the factory environment or the work, they are likely to just go elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh government has responded to the killing and the protests from industry bodies by setting up an industrial relations committee comprising CEOs of companies in Noida and Greater Noida and senior district police officers. This is seen as an attempt to sideline the labour department (which is usually pro-worker), and to look into the problems faced by businessmen because of labour disputes.

The workers’ perspective is of a hostile environment that is becoming ever more difficult, as states try to attract investment and become hospitable to business. Unions are discouraged, and contract and casual labour are hired on a large scale, leading to a loss of job security and stipulated worker benefits.

According to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions and Hind Mazdoor Sabha, no trade union has been registered in Greater Noida in the past two years. The companies in the area that have registered unions are those which have been there for some time, like Yamaha. CITU secretary W R Waradarajan says that unions are on their way out in the whole area.

That may apply more to unions with external political links. For the trend in Greater Noida is for companies to agree to the formation of internal unions, without external affiliation (to bodies like Citu).

In Graziano Transmissioni, the issue that led to the stand-off between the company management and workers last November was a move by some workers to get an HMS union registered. Those involved in this move were immediately sacked, say workers.

According to the Deputy Labour Commissioner’s office in Noida, the company gave a final settlement of Rs 5 lakh to each dismissed worker. But a strike followed and the company locked out 40 workers. Negotiations were mediated by labour department officials.

Then, in May this year, the company regularised 65 of its 70 apprentices but left out five. Workers demanded regularisation of these five as well. The company responded by suspending 27 people who were part of the union, which has remained unregistered because of the difficulties in getting registration.

When a dharna was organised, another 198 were locked out. Later the company agreed to take back the workers. But after the first batch had joined, the company fired 15 of the original lot of 27, again provoking workers, says the deputy labour commissioner, B K Singh.

Meanwhile, the company had begun hiring contract labour, and the agitation by suspended or sacked workers didn’t make a difference to its operations, say labour officials. Still, an agreement was hammered out on September 16, but things came to a flashpoint on the day of the murder, with different versions of what exactly happened.

The company says that it is committed to “transparency and open communication”. But without unions to represent the workers, and with perceptions differing sharply on what is the problem that needs to be tackled, the people who now have the state on their side are the businessmen, not the workers.