Maruti-Suzuki is confirming almost none of its workforce at the riot-torn Manesar plant near Delhi has been paid since a lock-out at the factory was imposed on 21 July.
The decision to halt all wages is standard practice in a lock-out says the automaker, but the move to freeze money to the near 4,000 staff has infuriated powerful trade union bodies, including the All India Trades Union Congress (AITUC), which has condemned the move, insisting: “They should be paid whatever wage they have earned – there should be a strategic compulsion to pay those wages.”
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
But Maruti maintains it is merely following the “law of the land” in halting wage payments to its employees, most of whom are on temporary contracts.
“The present situation in the lock-out is no-one is entitled to any salaries,” a Maruti-Suzuki spokesman told just-auto from Delhi.
The company also refuted suggestions it was unfair to penalise those not directly involved in the severe violence that left a senior manager dead and one hundred staff hospitalised.
“Is somebody standing silently there, is that fair to stand silent?” said the Maruti spokesman. “Fair or unfair is a perception-based thing.
“Is he [worker] being fair by just being a by-stander in his business? You can continue to argue, but what is clear is when the company took the decision of its lock-out, all these things were considered.
“At the time, all shift employees were there, who is being fair and not fair?”
No date has yet been set for any re-opening of the Manesar plant some 30km outside Delhi, but Maruti is denying suggestions it could move to West Bengal in a bid to avoid any future problems at its current site.
“We are not looking at moving,” said the Maruti spokesman. “We have plans at Manesar for the additional 250,000 unit capacity increase.”
The Indian automaker confirmed it was in daily contact with Suzuki concerning the situation, although no-one from the Japanese automaker was immediately available to discuss the shut-down.
Manesar produces the Swift [hatchback] and Dzire [sedan] models for which the order backlog currently stands at 100,000 with a waiting period per vehicle of up to five months.
