5th September 2011: Maruti Suzuki Employees Union

MARUTI SUZUKI EMPLOYEES UNION (MSEU)

As you know, from 29th August when Maruti Suzuki Industries Limited, MSIL, Manesar (Plot 1, Phase 3A) terminated 11 and suspended 38 workers, the production is effectively at a halt in the plant. The company has been splashing rumours across the media that production has resumed through some ITI-trained contract workers and has been quoting figures of 125-150 etc. of the number of cars produced in the plant.

We, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), send this communiqué on the situation since August 29th to lay out the real picture. The company has gone on a recruitment drive through contractors in the area, after dismissing its own workers, and has hired some contract workers in a desperate bid to start production. However, these workers do not have the knowledge, honed through years of skilled work, required to run the production. Of these new contract workers, many who have come out of the plant in solidarity with the workers outside, having stayed inside for past four days, tell us that they tried to operationalise the production line, being forced by the management for 1-2 days. But being unsuccessful, they had to push some cars down from the line, instead of the models going through the entire process, including proper inspection.

When earlier all over 3000 workers, permanent and contract, worked stretched to their full capacity, the company somehow used to produce 1000-1200 cars every day. And now, can the 120-odd untrained workers and its handful of engineers and supervisors produce anything? The production was at a total halt in the beginning of last week, and in the last 2-3 days, a meagre 8-10 cars were produced in the plant, which are all faulty models somehow clubbed together, as the company fakes its figures and tries to instil consumer confidence. The Swift model which is produced in this plant has at present 80000 bookings. In this situation the company is unable to run any proper production of cars, and is resorting to churn out faulty models. The company may send these faulty models to the market, so it could also be blamed on us later as it has done till now. At the same time, some few management and staff are also conniving with other companies so that they could dig in their own profits from this, again conveniently blaming the workers.

We want to tell everyone that unlike what the company and the media are painting us as- undisciplined and adamant saboteurs- we have a commitment for our work and value what we produce with our sweat and blood. It is we workers who produce, and not the impersonal company and its robots.

So we appeal to consumers to stop buying Maruti Suzuki cars till we workers sit at the factory gate, as it will entail in your loss, given the manner in which they are being produced. WE also appeal to all concerned to stand in solidarity with our struggle to end termination, suspension and charge-sheet, and to establish our right to unionise.

Shiv Kumar
General Secretary, MSEU