The Gurgaon Workers’ Fight to Unite

Gleaming glass towers standing among a herd of cattle, are proof of the speed at which Gurgaon has been industrialised. The animals have still not come to grips with the pace at which they have lost lush grazing fields to some of the biggest multinational corporations. And neither have the workers and their employers in these corporations come to terms with operating in the mutating industrial environment here.

 

Over the past few years, a series of agitations by trade unions indicate that the ride could get bumpy for the industry in the days ahead. Alarm bells went off once again last month after thousands of workers sat in protest to condole the death of an employee with RICO, an auto parts maker. Ajit Kumar Yadav was killed, in a skirmish allegedly with the security guards of the company.

 

The conflict is said to have been caused after workers here sought to register a trade union, a move that was opposed by the management. At the core of many conflicts in this industrial hub is said to be the workers’ basic right to form unions and a wary industry determined to not allow it. Most companies, particularly multinationals, are now increasingly employing casual workers, says a labour expert. Casual workers are not entitled to employee benefits such as provident fund and cannot unionise.

Factory workers in Gurgaon say that in most companies, especially the large corporations, the managements are generally reluctant to allow formation of multiple unions. “In some companies, they encourage a dummy union whose leaders are backed by the management but discourage legitimate unions from functioning,” said Anil Kumar, a leader with AITUC.

“Maruti was once the largest unit in the industrial area here and it used to have a very active workers union. However, all the MNCs that came up in Gurgaon later saw to it that the employees did not form unions. This attitude is only going aggravate tensions with the labour unions in the area,” says Himanshu an expert on labour studies with the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

AITUC leader D L Sachdeva says, “Our main demand is only that we be allowed to form a trade union. It is our right.”

“The management continues to employ more than a thousand casual labourers for several years; I still get paid Rs. 3,500 per month after working for 15 years with the company. And we cannot even form a union?,” asks Tek Bahadur, a machine operator at RICO, the epicenter of a recent workers’ agitation that spread to nearly 70 other units with nearly one lakh enraged workers taking to the streets.

Registration of several trade unions are pending with the registrar’s office, says Sachdeva. “The police, the state labour department and the state government are all working in favour of the managements in one labour dispute after the other. That is why registration of unions has become difficult.”

However, labour commissioner Surena Rajan says that the department has gone only by the rulebook. “We need to verify the number of people who have actually agreed to form the union and this does take some time.”

Mohit Malik, the president of the Gurgaon Chamber of Commerce says that multiple unions would definitely affect productivity in the factories. “There would be too much competition and strife among these unions.” The basic problem at RICO was that the workers had demanded too much money from the management, he added.

In the past 15 years, dozens of new office spaces have sprung up across Haryana’s commercial capital with automobile companies, BPOs, international banks and other firms rushing to set up shop here. A central tolled road opened two years ago that has a concession period of 30 years is already facing congestion. In short, Gurgaon has raced its way to growth in a decade with an estimated 25,000 industrial units—small, medium and large—being set up. Over the years, the stakes have also risen.

“In the last ten years over Rs. 10,000 crore has been invested by automobile companies, their ancillary units, textile companies and other such in Gurgaon. The BPOs too have invested thousands of crores here and so the issues with the workers have to be resolved,” says Malik.

The industrial area has faced several violent agitations in the last decade. The earliest among these was protests outside the Pashupati Textile Mills in 1998, in which five workers were killed in police firing. This was followed by an agitation at Maruti where many permanent employees were forced to resign. In 2007, workers at the Honda Motorcycles and Scooters plant once gain organised a strike seeking regularisation of employment and were beaten up by the police.

JNU’s Himanshu says that the companies need to be more accommodating when it comes to workers’ rights.

After the incident at RICO, there is palpable anger among the workers jostling for space under the temporary shelters that have sprung up outside the factory premises. The company is now said to have reached a pact with the workers by hiking their salaries in October. The workers claim that the management has agreed an across the board salary hike of Rs. 4,400, besides giving special incentives as per respective remuneration structures. RICO did not respond to repeated calls from Forbes India.

“You have heard of the Pink City of Jaipur, right? Well, we will turn Gurgaon into a Red City if our demands are not met,” mutters Narender Kumar, standing amidst a hundred other workers who are on strike outside the RICO factory in the Hero Honda industrial area here. “There will be a lot of bloodshed here,” he said grimly.