Striking workers at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant have returned to work, although around 1,000 contract employees are still believed to be staging a protest outside the North India site.
The Manesar factory has endured massive industrial unrest in 2011 with workers protesting at what they perceive to be a lack of union recognition and management’s insistence that deliberate sabotage has been the problem
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Staff were asked to sign a ‘good conduct bond’ although at this stage how many have put pen to paper remains unclear. A spokesman for Maruti Suzuki last week told just-auto some had agreed to sign but not others.
“The strike has been called off from 3 October,” All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) national secretary Darshan Sachdev told just-auto from India. “But unfortunately 1,000 contract workers have not been taken back. One thousand workers are still sitting outside.
“And out of 33 dismissed workers, only 19 have been taken back and the other 14 have been placed under suspension.”
Maruti Suzuki was not available to confirm the status of either contract or any suspended workers, while it appears the unions themselves are not acting in a totally united way.
The AITUC has branded as “pocket unions,” those bodies it believes to have been authorised by Maruti, while it would have preferred to set up a labour body on its own terms.
Manesar produces around 700 Swift models per day.
