India Inc Grapples With Growing Labour Unrest

7/28/2019 India Inc Grapples With Growing Labour Unrest

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India Inc grapples with growing labour unrestN. Madhavan October 26, 2012

A worker at Maruti Suzuki's plant in

Manesar, Haryana. Protests at the

plant turned violent on July 18 this

year, resulting in the death of an HR

manager

"armed with iron rods and door beams, the mob spread out in groups in the factory area

and targeted supervisors, managers and executives. In simultaneous attacks in different

parts of the factory, the mob beat the managers on the head, legs and back, rendering many

of their victims bleeding and unconscious. They also ransacked offices, broke glass panes

and wantonly damaged property. Finally, they set the offices on fire."

This is not the script of a violent film but the management

version of what happened at carmaker Maruti Suzuki's

Manesar, Haryana, plant on July 18, 2012, as detailed in the

company's press release. That day, Awanish Kumar Dev,

Maruti's General Manager for human resources (HR), was

burnt to death, and close to 100 other executives were

hospitalised. The plant had to be shut down for over a

month and 500 workers were dismissed.

{blurb}

The incident in Manesarpoints to a worrying trend

among factory workers. In the past, worker protests in

India often descended into violence, but deaths used to be

rare and killings even more so. Not any more; in the last

four years, there have been at least six 'labour homicides' ,

from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu to Nagpur in Maharashtra to Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. In

five of the six instances, a manager was killed by workers. On October 13, that changed,

when the owner of a Marathi newspaper in Nagpur allegedly shot dead a worker.

This willingness to go to extreme lengths points to the high levels offrustration and

desperation among workers on the shop floor today. "Except for a few incidents, the labour

movement in India has not seen a homicide. The recent events are disturbing and call for

introspection," says Santanu Sarkar, an associate professor who teaches industrial relations

at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

The labour function has undergone a

dramatic change in India over the last two
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/maruti-manesar-plant-violence-due-to-internal-issues-sit/1/189078.htmlhttp://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/trouble-brews-at-hondas-manesar-facility/1/187762.htmlhttp://businesstoday.intoday.in/storyprint/189143#http://businesstoday.intoday.in/storyprint/189143#http://businesstoday.intoday.in/http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/maruti-manesar-plant-violence-due-to-internal-issues-sit/1/189078.htmlhttp://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/trouble-brews-at-hondas-manesar-facility/1/187762.htmlhttp://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/maruti-share-prices/1/19202.htmlhttp://businesstoday.intoday.in/storyprint/189143#http://businesstoday.intoday.in/storyprint/189143#http://businesstoday.intoday.in/


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decades. "Today a large proportion of the

workforce in the factory is young. It has high

aspirations but low patience," says Prince

Augustin, Executive Vice President for

Group Human Capital & Leadership

Development at auto maker Mahindra &

Mahindra. Young workers, who are at the

vanguard of this change, are turning many

an established value on its head. Surveys

have found that loyalty is not very high.

Instead, workers want good salaries, status

and empowerment.

They want to be on par with white collar

workers. The inability of managements,

governments and even labour unions to

cope with this change has led to simmeringdiscontent, warns Sarkar. The advent of

multinational companies, following the 1991

reforms, led to the creation of a new

working culture, with some organisations

having no labour unions. "Companies can

have CII, Assocham and FICCI, but workers

can't have a union. Is that fair,'' asks A.K.

Padmanabhan, President, Centre of Indian

Trade Unions, and a member of theCommunist Party of India (Marxist)

politburo. The state governments that had

rolled out the red carpet for these

companies remained silent. Non-

acceptance of the demand for a union at

Hyundai Motor India's Chennai plant led to a

strike. "These companies respect trade

union laws in their own countries but ignore

them in India,'' adds Padmanabhan.Hyundai Motor India finally recognised an

apolitical union earlier this year.

There is a strong sense of being exploited, particularly among contract workers .

According to government data, they account for 45 per cent of the private sector's workforce.

Activists allege that since they are not organised, employers have taken advantage of them.

In some cases, contract workers are in the same jobs as permanent staff at half the pay.

The long pending demand to ensure equal pay for equal work by contract workers has not
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/osamu-suzuki-maruti-interview/1/187783.html


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been accepted by the government.

Padmanabhan cites the case of Maruti, where "1,400 of

the 3,000 workers are contract employees, many of whom

are paid less than permanent staff doing the same job".

This sort of inequality has led to tensions on the shop floor.

The Contract Workers Abolition & Regulation Act does not

provide for equal pay for equal work. However, it stipulates

that companies cannot engage contract workers in an

area of work that is permanent in nature.

Companies have been flouting this norm while the

government looks the other way, say workers and

activists. Compounding the fallout of all these changes,

disputes still take years to be resolved. "Young people are

warm blooded and impatient. They want quick solutions

and if that does not happen they end up doing things theyrepent later,'' says Mahindra's Augustin.

This unprecedented scenario demands that stakeholders

gain a better understanding of the ground situation and

make far-reaching changes. Labour laws need to be

simplified. Currently, there are about 250 laws - 45 central

and the rest state laws - that govern labour in the country.

Companies need to have flexibility in hiring and terminating

employees. "Society has changed. Values have changed.Business has changed and so has the economy. But the

labour law is obsolete," points out Shekar Arora, Executive

Director (HR Strategy) at Ashok Leyland, India's second-

largest maker of trucks and buses. Companies need that

flexibility to stay competitive in a globalised world. In the

October issue of Policy Watch, its monthly publication, the

Confederation of Indian industry has said that "a holistic relook at existing labour legislations

is required to align the legal framework with the dynamic requirements of globalisation,

competitiveness, and productivity".

Equally, the government needs to ensure that the law is amended to ensure contract

workers get equal pay for equal work, say experts.

Labour unions, too, could benefit by being more proactive. "Emergence of the young

workforce of today needs a new kind of leadership for engagement and education," says S.Y.

Siddiqui, Chief Operating Officer for HR and Administration at Maruti Suzuki. Today, union

leaders do not inspire confidence in either the management or the workers they represent.
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/strike-at-auto-factories-over-salaries/1/16842.html


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Equal opportunities for advancement across the length and breadth of an organisation will

keep most problems away, say experts on industrial relations.

Society has changed. Values have changed. Busines s has changed. The economy haschanged. But the labour law is obsolete: Shekar Arora Photo: Shekhar Ghosh

Managers need to walk that extra mile to solve a problem rather than getting legalistic about

every issue. "HR has been divorced from industrial relations (IR) for the past two decades,"

says Jerome Joseph, Professor, Personnel & Industrial Relations, Indian Institute of

Management, Ahmedabad. "There has been more investment in middle management and its

performance than in building relationships with workers. There is an IR capability deficit in

organisations today."

B. Santhanam does not see labour homicides as a pattern but as isolated incidents. "But theworry is that they can lead to a copycat effect if we do not get our act together,'' says the

former president of the Employers Federation of India, and Managing Director of Saint

Gobain Glass, South Asia.

Ashok Leyland is making an innovative attempt to tackle the problem by building a "classless

workplace" at its new facility in Pant Nagar, Uttarakhand. It tackles many of the challenges on

the shop floor today, with uniform work and pay scales for all the workers. A blue collar

worker has the same opportunities as a white collar executive to grow and head the

company. "We want to break this norm - once a workman always a workman," says

Leyland's Arora.

The company calls it the 21st century factory credo. It could well be the first step in finding

that elusive solution to settle industrial disputes in India.

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India Inc Grapples With Growing Labour Unrest

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