[Reader-list] 3-Days Sit-Down Strike at Maruti Suzuki Factory in Manesar/Gurgaon, India

[Jeebesh]

Preliminary Balance Sheet of the 13-Days Sit-Down Strike at Maruti  
Suzuki Factory in Manesar/Gurgaon, India

  full version: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com

  From 4th to 17th of June around 2,000 young workers engaged in a  
wildcat sit-down strike at Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar [1]. With  
the following text we hope to contribute to the necessary debate about  
this important strike and invite friends and comrades, particularly in  
Delhi area, to share their experiences and views.

  It was an important strike in local terms. The two Maruti assembly  
plants coordinate hundreds of local supplying factories [2], the  
Manesar plant dominates a new industrial area of major importance.  
There has been silence at Maruti Suzuki for more than a decade: the  
workers in Gurgaon plant have been silenced by the lock-out in 2000/01  
[3], and they did not join the strike in June. The Manesar plant was  
opened in 2006/07, but the young and casualised work-force had not  
found their voice as yet.

  It was a hard strike. The workers gave no notice to management, they  
stopped production completely and around 2,000 workers stayed inside  
the factory for nearly two weeks. The strike 'postponed' the  
production of 13,200 cars and caused a loss of about 6 billion Rs.  
(133 million USD / 100 million Euro). Maruti Suzuki's June sales  
figures dropped by 23 per cent, the sharpest fall in two and a half  
years. In July management announced to shift one production-line back  
from Manesar to Gurgaon plant. Workers continued the strike despite  
the police stationed within the factory premises and despite strike  
having been officially declared illegal by Haryana government on 10th  
of June.

  Management and state did not dare to attack the workers inside the  
factory - a lot of workers' struggles in the area had been attacked  
physically once workers left the factory. This is partly due to the  
management's fear that plant and machinery could be damaged during the  
course of a police intervention, but mainly due to fear of the state  
that - in the current local and global social situation - repression  
could cause unpredictable trigger effects. While state and management  
did not know how to deal with the situation, the main unions  
repeatedly emphasised that 'the workers are victimised'; that the  
workers, and not the company, are in a difficult spot.

  Despite the young workers' courage and the fact that the company was  
hit at times of full-capacity the strike ended in a defeat for the  
mass of workers: they did not enforce any betterment of conditions and  
wages, which was their main concern. Instead the agreement included a  
'punishment wage cut' of two days' wages per day of strike - something  
rarely seen in industrial relations in India. Another element of the  
agreement states that the 11 workers (union leaders) sacked during the  
strike were taken back, though they have to undergo an 'inquiry'. We  
are not able to say whether workers at large felt demoralised after  
the strike, but we can imagine it.

  The strike could have spread. The initial demands and underlying  
motivations of the Maruti workers matched the atmosphere of the young  
work-force in the area: more money, less work. In Manesar more than a  
hundred thousand young workers have similar concerns [4]. The strike  
stopped production at around 200 local supplying factories, but no  
active connections were established between Maruti workers and the  
wider work-force in the territory. This might be one of the main  
differences to the Honda strike in China last summer and main reason  
for the fact that the strike was very underrepresented in both  
mainstream and left-wing global media - despite the 'emerging'  
position of Maruti Suzuki and 'India' in the global market.

  The focus on 'formal representation' choked the dynamic of the  
strike. During the course of the strike, the direct demands of the  
workers were reduced to the question of which union-flag should be put  
up at the gate. We could summarise the main reasons for the defeat of  
the strike as follows: workers raised direct demands, but early on  
these demands were 'integrated' in the workers' hope that by formal  
recognition of an independent union their material situation would  
improve; we then saw an attack both by management and state, cutting  
of electricity, isolation of workers by army of security guards,  
declaring the strike formerly illegal and last but not least by  
sacking the 11 'leaders'; the main unions then offered 'support' and  
at the same time focussed the struggle on the question of 'taking back  
the leaders' and 'workers' rights' for representation. Workers did not  
manage neither to break out of the material encirclement set-up by  
company management and state nor to escape the 'embrace' by the main  
unions.


The fate of the strike was handed over to the 'negotiating forces'. It  
is naïve to repeat the phrase of 'betrayal' of the main unions. It  
evades the question of what gives them the power to betray in the  
first place. Instead we should focus on the question how workers can  
struggle in a way, which leads both to an immediate material gain and  
to 'political' experience of self-organisation and generalisation  
beyond the company walls - the latter becoming increasingly a  
precondition for the former.



[1]

A short video documentary can be found here soon (with English and  
German subtitles):

http://de.labournet.tv/video/6035/streik-bei-maruti-suzuki-gurgaonindien



[2]

Short articles and reports from the local supply-chain:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-933/#fn1

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-935/#fn1

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-936/#fn1



[3]

Material on re-structuring at Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon plant:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no8/#fn5



[4]

Paper on Potential for Wage Struggle Offensive in Gurgaon-Manesar:

http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/gurgaonworkersnews-no-937/


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www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com