Right to organise, non-regularisation behind labour stirs

A number of strikes and labour agitations have been seen in multinational companies across the country in the last few years. Though the automobile sector has been at the centre of the more serious of these, in most cases, the issue is formation of unions and hiring of contract labourers.

In Hyundai’s Chennai plant, the workers’ agitation began with the registration of a union in 2007. The latest round culminated yesterday in a temporary truce forced by the labour commissioner’s office in Tamil Nadu.

Says state president of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), AK Padmanabhan: “The only demand of the workers was that the management talk to the union about their issues. The latter has been refusing to do so. The management has been taking punitive action against the workers, including cutting wages, issuing chargesheets, and suspensions. There were 75 dismissals eight months ago.”

 

Workers in Hero Honda’s plant in Haryana have been on the same path. Their agitation culminated on March 18 when contract and casual workers began marching from Dharuhera in Riwadi to Chandigarh.

On May 2, the workers of Musashi, a Japanese auto parts manufacturer, were baton-charged when they tried to approach Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda during a road show.

The same night, casual and contract workers of Hero Honda were arrested as they were planning to start a hunger strike the next day.

Rakhi Sehgal, an activist of the New Trade Union Initiative, a federation of independent trade unions, says recession has little to do with these strikes. “We went to meet the chief minister later and he was arrogant and unconcerned,” said Sehgal.

In Musashi, the issue is not recognition to the union. There is a registered union in the company but the fight is over rise in productivity targets, says Sehgal. About 1,800 casual workers have been sacked in Hero Honda so far while about 500 have lost jobs in Musashi, according to Sehgal.

Nestle India’s plant in Pantnagar in Uttarakhand has been shut for a fortnight. The strike, according to Sanjay Amre of the International Union of Food, which has federated the unions of Nestle, is because the company tried to oppose formation of unions and has been facing resistance from workers over its employment practices. He says only 175 workers among a total of 1,500-odd workers at the Nestle plant are permanent and trainees are being asked to leave for one reason or the other. Nestle officials said the reason the workers were sacked was indiscipline.

The government says the problem is with multinational companies. Labour Secretary Sudha Pillai said she was aware of the agitation in Hyundai but had not heard about the others. “Multinational companies were opposed to allowing unions and preferred to form workers’ committees, though the law gives workers the right to form unions,” she said.

Hind Mazdoor Sabha National Secretary RA Mittal said these strikes had been prompted by the denial of the right to organise.

With two labour strikes already this year so far, there is a groundswell of dissatisfaction among workers in the automobile sector. Here too, the issues are non-recognition of unions, influx of contract labourers and delays in wage agreements.

Estimates suggest that 55-60 per cent of those employed in the automobile sector are temporary workers. This figure was below 40 per cent in the 1980s.

DL Sachdev, national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), says, “There could be increased cases of labour strikes in the coming period. We are talking to the unions of all automobile companies and all of them have complained about lack of interest from managements in regularising the workers.”

The global economic slowdown and the slump in automobile industry has led to almost 30,000 contractual and temporary workers being laid off in Pune’s automobile belt, which employs about 300,000, over the past six to eight months. Tata Motors was forced to sack 300 employees at its Jamshedpur plant in October.

NK Rattan, divisional head, Sales & Marketing, HMSI (Honda Motors and Scooters India), said, “In the manufacturing division, our ratio of permanent to temporary workers is 60:40. For temporary workers, the work tenure is about a year. Once their term is over, they are relieved.