The Labor violence at Maruti Manesar plant which led to the
death of Awinash Kumar Dev, General Manager HR of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd is
condemned by the entire business fraternity of India. But this is not the only
case of labor violence, recent trends suggest an increase in labor violence in
India. Maruti Suzuki itself had to face four instances of labor violence since
June 2011, which has led to the lost in production of around 1,50,000 units.
All these incidents makes you think about the possible reason for labor
violence, the reason behind the formulation of labor union and it even makes
you think is it because of the inherent violent nature of the labor force who
are not ready to listen and negotiate. As rightly pointed out by Anil Sir that
there is no good or bad union, there is only good or bad management style. So
according to me the onus is on the management to build trust and a sense of
community without creating any difference with the work force. The fundamental
reason therefore is lack of trust which leads to formation of a union or body
who can represent the workers and put forward their demands and expectation.
Also I feel the recent rise in cost of living, scarcity of jobs, outdated labor
laws adds on to the problem. Now coming back specifically to the Maruti case,
the possible reasons for the violence are as follows-
·
Lack of parity within the same workforce- Maruti
had a large number of contract or temporary workers to meet cyclical demands of
the Industry. These temporary workers get a fraction of salary when compared to
the salary of permanent workers with no benefits. They also have a question
mark on their job security and are dependent on the contractors. Such difference
within the same workforce is bound to result into labor unrest. Thus there is
need to regularization of contract labor and also look into increasing their
wages as the socio-economic condition is tough for workers residing in the Manesar
region
·
Outdated labor laws- Labor law doesn’t allow
companies to regulate their permanent employees according to the demands of the
business cycle. Therefore to meet the flexibility in demand they rely on
contract workers
·
Difference in work culture- Strict Japanese way
of doing things were imposed on the workers which they were not used to. It was
not clearly communicated and they were not able to understand. Workers felt
like the management was using them as machines
·
Lack of proper communication channel- Japanese
were strong in communication, but didn’t accepted other thoughts, focused on
processes and systems and fail to understand the Indian ground level issues.
The creation of two in a box organization structure(2 head in every department-
1 Indian and 1 Japanese), meant there was no proper communication which led to
lot of confusion
·
No Union at Manesar Plant- It meant that all the
grievances had to be routed to the Gurgaon plant which took a lot of time to
get resolved
·
Lack of trust- The level of trust was so bad
that whenever workers saw HR personnel they started thinking that someone would
be fired. Clearly the management at Maruti had failed to build the level of
trust between management and workers. Labor violence will never go away unless
organizations stop focusing too much on profit and in the process use its
workforce as mere machines or means to achieve that profit. The focus should be
to communicate to the workers that organization is for the people, build by the
people and of the people. Good example is how Toyota for 3 yrs apologized to
every single employee who were being retrenched which resulted for more than a
decade of good industrial relation
·
Lack of proper working condition- Basic hygiene factor were not in place. Canteens
and washroom were way too far and there was not enough break time being
provided. Majority of workers were young and courageous. They clearly felt
cheated which gave rise to anger and frustration against the management
Thus all this factors led to the
labor unrest at Manesar which the management clearly failed to understand.
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