Maruti-Suzuki is declining to comment on union claims the labour body has won 11 out of 12 seats against what it refers to as a “management installed puppet panel” at the automaker’s Manesar plant.
The factory has been riven with chronic industrial relations for several years, culminating in a riot in July 2012, that left one manager dead and 100 hospitalised.
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However, the Maruti-Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) is now maintaining it has secured a margin of 80% for its members in recent elections that “validates our long, continuous, untiring struggle of more than two years.”
The Maruti-Suzuki plant, around 30km from Delhi, was subject to a lock-out following the extreme violence two years ago, with the vast majority of its near-4,000 workforce sent home without pay.
“We have never had such violence before – we are trying to recover,” a Suzuki spokesman at the company’s headquarters in Hamamatsu near Mount Fuji told just-auto at the time.
“We don’t make any official comment on cost.”
A statement from what styles itself as the ‘Provisional Workers Committee’ of the MSWU noted: “For [the] election that [was] due this year, after we formed Maruti Suzuki Workers Union in March 2012, management tried all means to coerce us and install its own puppet union.
“Our struggle has entered a new phase with this victory. It’s a validation of our continuing struggle not only for workers at Maruti-Suzuki but for all workers here and everywhere who struggle everyday against exploitation-repression for their union rights.”
A spokesman for Maruti-Suzuki in India declined to comment to just-auto.
