Wheels within wheels in Maruti

As has been said, the greatest enemy of any one truth is the rest of the truth. So, while the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) condemns the Maruti Suzuki management for ‘buying peace' at its Manesar plant and the ordinary worker feels betrayed by his erstwhile leadership, the former union leaders, too, stare at an uncertain future.

“There has been a betrayal. Either our former leaders betrayed us, or the management betrayed our former leaders. We could have won, had these 30 (workers under suspension) not given up. But our struggle will continue. We have no option but to trust our new set of leaders, but we cannot be sure of their motivation,” a Maruti Suzuki Manesar worker told Business Line.

The struggle at the Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki was essentially a fight for union recognition. The demand for a union was conceptualised by former leaders, such as Mr Sonu Kumar Gujjar and Mr Shiv Kumar. They, along with 28 other agitating workers of MSI's Manesar plant (under suspension), were sent off with a severance package of Rs 16 lakh each, when the company finally claimed to close its labour unrest chapter on October 21. Following the anti-climactic end to Maruti's labour agitation, which was threatening to become a one-of-its-kind case study on the extent of labour power, almost everyone now has an opinion on whether it was right or wrong to accept the ‘VRS package'.

UNION LEADERS' STORY

Ask the erstwhile union leaders and they have a different story to tell. “We acted according to the situation. The High Court had ordered to remove us from our site of protest outside the company to Raheja Square, seven km away. Seven of the adjoining villages had turned against us as their livelihood depended on the company, and there were rumours of the company shifting its base away from Manesar. The company was also scheduled to begin fresh recruitments. Our financial condition was stretched, as we hadn't received salaries for four months. We had slim chances of winning,” says Mr Kumar, a former labour leader at Maruti's Manesar plant.

Indeed, the ‘truth' often has multiple competing versions. Seen from a normative angle, the ‘VRS packages' may look like bribes, with the management trying to buy industrial peace by targeting the agitators.

But seen through the lens of a young labour leader, one gets quite another picture. Mr Gujjar knows that Rs 16 lakh won't last him a lifetime. His future employability is jeopardised, and so is future workplace cooperation from fellow workers. He also knows that he might have to shift out of the Gurgaon-Manesar belt sooner or later. He can start a shop of his own in his small village, but his leadership at Manesar plant has scarred him for life.

“We had tough choices to make. We could either opt for enquiry into the 30 cases, in which case, if found guilty, we wouldn't be entitled to VRS and our work experience wouldn't count. Or, we could agree with the company to take back 1,200 casual workers, resume bus service, grant casual leave and also take back 64 other workers without any enquiry. The latter also meant that the 30 workers under suspension quit the company, taking VRS packages, since the company was anyway suspicious of our intention,” says Mr Gujjar.

JOB SECURITY COMES FIRST

The Maruti labour chapter testifies to the growing tendency of union recognition giving way to the issue of employment security. During an agitation, the workers tend to shift focus from the demand of a union to reinstatement of their fired colleagues. “This is because a shop-floor worker has to ascertain two different identities — union identity as well as worker's identity, with the former often losing out to the latter. Safeguarding the worker's identity of those who are transferred, suspended or dismissed, through litigation, becomes a long-drawn battle, and often workers don't have that kind of financial muscle to sustain their fight and therefore wriggle  their way out by getting compensation, as happened in Maruti's case,” says Mr Shyam Sundar, a labour economist.

The prevailing peace at Maruti's Manesar plant does not look sustainable. The management has already realised that they have done away with 30 ‘bad apples', only to be replaced by a fresh set of ‘bad apples'. The workers at Manesar have again chosen their leaders to carry forward their application of an independent union that will have no external affiliation and outside membership. Their struggle may now be on the back-foot, but it needs no rocket science to figure out that any leadership is only the representation of the struggle, not the struggle itself. “Bribing and replacing the leadership won't quell the demand of the 2,000-odd workers. The issue is far from over,” says a JNU research scholar, who has been supporting the workers.

GREY ZONE

The company, reportedly, is now open to facilitating an ‘independent' union at the Manesar plant, obviously trying to make it a pocket union of no consequence. “The Trade Union Act, 1926, and Industrial Dispute Act, 1947, don't allow the company to become a party to the process of union formation. They cannot facilitate or discourage the process. However these remain only on paper,” says Rajendra Pathak, advocate for the workers who are seeking to form a new union.

Clearly, a labour struggle is fraught with tough choices, and someone has to make them. The person who gets the axe sometimes also becomes the  namak haraam (betrayer) for his comrades, as happened with Sonu Gujjar and his followers.

However, this doesn't mean that Gujjar and the others can be cleared of all blame. And yet there is scope for more than one truth to emerge, the locus of which can never be traced on a black-and-white chequered board. It lies somewhere in the shades of grey.

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