Continued labour unrest at Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) has alarmed auto companies in the belt between Gurgaon and the carmaker’s strike-crippled facility in Manesar, as both the carmaker giant and vendors have reported a combined loss of around Rs 3,000 crore since the start of the standoff earlier in June this year.
The 1981-founded automobile giant has 250 suppliers —four-fifth of who have manufacturing units in this region of Haryana.
A company official said on Wednesday that most of its vendors had set up units in the region to supply to its plants in Gurgaon and Manesar. “Since June this year, our suppliers have together incurred losses to the tune of Rs 1,300 crore,” he told Business Standard. For Delhi-headquartered MSIL, the disruption in production has meant a loss of a whopping 54,775 units. Revenue losses have mounted to Rs 1,643 crore. MSIL’s suppliers include auto component majors Anand Automotive, Rico Auto Industries, Sona Koyo and Lumax Industries.
The situation continues to be grave with production dwindling to a mere 600 units at Gurgaon on Wednesday. It has already halted at Manesar. With the disruption in the supply of components from vendor Suzuki Powertrain India Limited (SPIL), the output at MSIL now stands at almost a tenth of the 5,000 units usually produced by the company from across its four plants in Gurgaon and Manesar.
“The Manesar plant continues to remain captive in the hands of striking workers,” the official said. “The production at the Gurgaon plant has further come down, as there was no supply of diesel engines and transmissions from SPIL.”
All the same, nearly 50,000 workers belonging to companies in the Gurgaon, Manesar, Dharuhera, Bawal and Rewari region have resolved to demonstrate tomorrow in front of MSIL’s Manesar’s facility in solidarity with the protesting workers at the company.
While the management maintains that the current strike is in violation of the agreement signed by the workers with the company management on October 1, workers allege that the company has refused to induct around 1,100 contract workers after a 33-day standoff that began in end-August.
The company on Wednesday, again, brushed aside allegations that the workers are protesting due to non-absorption of contractual employees as has been agreed to by the management. “That is a non-issue,” said the official. “We are gradually ramping up our production at Manesar. This includes our new 2.5-lakh capacity Manesar B assembly plant. Many of the contract workers are likely to be absorbed in the expanded operations. We have communicated this to the contractual workers through their employers.”
The Manesar facility has around 2,000 workers. Of them, 700 are regular employees. The company claimed 170 regular workers have not joined the sit-in strike initiated by the other workers at the unit. Another 500 workers were being “held under duress” by the striking workers in the factory, before they were rescued with the help of the police. MSIL claimed striking workers had beaten up many of these captives.
An estimated 8,000 workers at the three subsidiaries – MSIL’s Manesar plant, Suzuki Powertrain India Limited and Suzuki Motorcycle India Private Limited – stopped work Friday evening affecting shifts across the facilities. Work was also affected at three separate companies – Hi-Lex India Global Network, Endurance Transmission India Limited and Satyam Auto Components Limited.
The strike came within a week of the management and the workers at MSIL reaching an agreement to end the labour unrest which had continued for the whole of last month. On October 1, the protesting workers had agreed to sign the ‘Good Conduct Bond’ as laid down by the management. The company had agreed to reinstate the 18 trainees against whom disciplinary action had been taken. However, the 44 regular workers against whom disciplinary action had been initiated, MSIL had said, would not be taken back and they would continue to remain suspended. The workers have now violated the agreement and demanded that the 44 regular workers be also be taken back by MSIL.
