Nandita Haksar

The liberalization of the Indian economy has had an impact on workers struggles and the trade union movement as a whole. Liberalization has undermined the gains of working class struggles and trade union activity with the managements of companies denying the right of trade unions to collective bargaining and the introduction of schemes to promote numerical “flexibility of the workforce.”

All these trends can be seen in the struggles of the Maruti Suzuki workers’ struggles from 2011 to the present. The workers fought hard and long to build a solidarity between contract workers and permanent workers and this solidarity gave their struggles exceptional strength and militancy.

However, after 2012, when Maruti workers poured out their anger after years of patient negotiations and by beating up some 100 managers, and one was killed in the violence, the entire union leadership was framed in the murder case and given life imprisonment. Hundreds of workers including more than 500 permanent workers, were dismissed without a domestic enquiry, on grounds of “lack of confidence” which amounted to an unfair labour practice.

The workers continued their struggle by moving the labour court and the High Court but they have still not got their jobs back even though so many had been given joining letters by the company.
On September 18, 2024 the Maruti Workers Sangharsh Committee (consisting of a few permanent workers who had been dismissed in 2012) decided to sit on dharna in Manesar in support of their demand for reinstatement. The Chief Minister himself promised to settle the matter. They have met with him several times and each time he has given his assurance.

The Sangharsh Committee has also raised the demands of the non-permanent workers working in the factory and their case is before the Labour Commissioner. The Management has disputed the right of the Sangharsh Committee to represent the non-permanent workers so they gave a call to non-permanent workers to form their own union.

January 5, 2025 saw the birth of the new Union of the Maruti Suzuki Non-Permanent Workers Sangh with more than 3000 workers gathering together to pledge to fight for permanent jobs.
This struggle has exposed the fraud being committed on the workers by the Japanese company with the State and Central Government complicit in depriving worker citizens of India of their right to livelihood and jobs.

How is this done?

When Maruti Suzuki abolished contract work it replaced it with Fixed Term Employees. And even these Fixed Tern employees were divided into different categories with different wages but all these categories were doing the same work as the permanent workers. These categories include: Apprentices, Temporary Worker (TW 1,2,3) and Casual Worker (C1 and C2) which the company calls “non regular workers. These workers are getting a salary any where between Rs 12,000 and 30,000. The permanent workers get a salary of Rs 1,30,000 or more. The top managers, all Japanese, are getting annual salary in crores, with the MD getting Rs.51 crore annually.
The Government has added a layer of exploitation under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the Nationl Council for Vocational Training. As a part of this scheme there has emerged a group of workers called the MST (Multi-Skill Technician) workers. In case of Maruti Suzuki company the student joins the Maruti Suzuki Training Academy for a two year course in learning the trade of “Automotive Manufacturing”.

According to the new union members these MST workers (who are a part of the Non-Permanent Workers Union) are given barely one week’s training and put on the assembly line. They do the work that the permanent worker is supposed to do, under the same conditions, and the same shifts but with salaries or stipends which are less than statutory minimum wages.

The fraud is even more diabolical because the government and industry claim, under the Automotive Mission Plan (AMP), to make the Indian automotive industry a significant contributor to the “Skill India” Programme and make it one of the largest job creating engines in the Indian economy. They claim that the potential for incremental number of both direct and indirect jobs to be created by the Indian automotive industry over the next decade is 65 million. This is over and above additional 25 million jobs created in previous decade.

And now the Ministry of Heavy Industries is working with auto industry associations, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) and the Automotive Component Manufacturers (ACMA) on the Automotive Mission Plan for 2047; a plan which will, it is hoped, pave the way for India to become an advanced industrial power.

When they claim they have created three jobs in fact it is one worker who is repeatedly employed with gaps of a few months under the Fixed Term Contract as TW 1,2 and then 3 without guarantee for a permanent job.

The MST workers have found their certificates have no value in the labour market and they are not equivalent to the diplomas given by the ITI’s.

In addition to this, or perhaps because of it, the company has introduced more and more robots and greater automation which has resulted in workers losing their jobs, a fact the Maruti Suzuki has not acknowledged. According to sources in the industry “Maruti Suzuki is accelerating digital transformation with key initiatives underway around robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT). Additionally, the company is placing a big bet on AI and analytics to assess its rapidly growing data to drive meaningful insights and business decisions.

Needless to say, workers or their representatives are not involved in any of the policy making in the automobile industry. The challenge before the trade unions is to save jobs from being destroyed by the developments in technology.

For the time being the new union of young workers, none above the age of 30, is demanding that non-permanent workers be paid the same wage for the same work, and also, the recruitment being done in the new factory at Sonepat be from the pool of non-permanent workers who have already experience of working in Maruti Suzuki.
Today the permanent workers are just 17 per cent of the workforce while 83 per cent are all non-permanent workers; and they have no one to represent their interests so they have taken the first step to organize and fight for their rights as workers and as citizens of India, where the Constitution is made in the name of the People.

The Maruti Suzuki workers have a long history of struggle and solidarity between permanent workers and the non-permanent workers. The workers first struggled to establish a union and in their charter of demands they included the right of contract workers. The militant struggles of 2011-2012 forged its strength from this solidarity. The Japanese Management strategy was to announce that it had abolished contract labour altogether and instead turned to fixed term employment.