Tuesday 1 January 2013

Industrial Relations_Maruti_N_BALAJI_HRLP002



Maruti has maximum market share in India, they are known for their after sales service. But they have failed to maintain the workplace peace. Rather than saying it as the maruti’s failure, it is the eye opener for Indian auto industry that relies mainly on the contract labor.
Most of auto industries have started following organization structure
Why organizations go for contract labor?
1) Cost saving –Salary cost ,admin cost & production cost
2) Seasonal nature of job
3) Provide employment to unskilled labor
4) Reducing the ownership at workplace
5) To avoid union problems
Everything has changed with time. Earlier, when you are employed in an organization, you are considered to be permanent. There was no term like permanent, temporary & contract. These are the inventions by the great HR leaders. This helped in increasing the profits of business many times but improper of execution of systems will have adverse effects as faced by maruti .

Changes in the society
 The meaning of work has changed along with changes in the society. During ancient Greeks and Romans, work was simply a curse. In primitive Christianity, work had little intrinsic value or importance, but was instrumental in promoting health of body and soul. But later development conceded that work is a form of service to God, now work is considered as the social status by which you are recognized in the society. The kind of employer and the work what we do also adds value to your social respect.
In the case of an Employer, he is not only expected to work, need to follow the core values of the business, which is the indirect driver of the business. Values can be defined as generalized and social desirability of modes of conduct. The value concept is a powerful one because it can be meaningfully employed at all levels of social analysis – cultural, societal, institutional, organizational, group and individual. Values can have a major impact on how employees approach their work and on their feelings about their jobs and the organization itself and consequently influence the work culture of the organization.
Economy has pushed the employer to behave different:
 In the growing economy like India the main focus of the business is to increase its productivity and expand its profitability. In general most of the industries in manufacturing sector are driven by production. However, productivity, especially in the short term is decisively affected by the employee’s attitude towards work, which in turn is clearly determined by the manner in which their work places are organized and run by management. This is mainly because of the change in focus from Man to machine by which they are lagging in human factors at work place, which may lead to adverse effects in future.
The organization is brainy enough to find out all the possible way to reduce the cost , they introduced the concept of temporary labor, which has became the real threat to organization in long run .In few industries the % of temporary workmen has increased more than 50% ,few rough side of using temporary workmen and their effects to organization are ,
1)      They are paid much less than the regular employee’s-this would lead to inequality ,since two groups of people are doing the same activity but one gets paid higher than the other as a result they are tend to have negative attitude towards work .
2)      Lack of Job security and ownership – Apart from the bias shown in terms of compensation system, contract workers have no job security and they don’t even get basic benefits like gratuity, provident fund and health insurance.
 Here-in lies the importance of work culture and values in the organizations. A developing economy like India can achieve its peak of advancement if it can increase its Productivity appreciably and not at the cost of human values.
Taking in to consideration of Maruti which had faced a huge Industrial relation failure causing a loss of over Rs2500 crore for the company. The main objectives of IR are,
A.      To safeguard the interest of labor and management by securing the highest level of mutual understanding and good-will among all those sections in the industry which participate in the process of production.
B.      B. To avoid industrial conflict or strife and develop harmonious relations, which are an essential factor in the productivity of workers and the industrial progress of a country.
They failed to achieve both the objectives.
The main cause of labour problem in MSIL is because of the following reasons,
1)      Cultural difference
2)      Organization structure
3)      Temporary workmen selection
Cultural difference:
Maruti has a blend of both Indian and Japanese culture and they claim to have the positives of both the culture, manesar being a new plant it claimed to have dominated influence of Japanese culture. Though they may claim to manage well but practically Indian and Japanese culture are far apart. Their sense of discipline, dedication, working hours, punctuality and expectations are completely different.
As reported by many HR leaders this cultural difference has triggered the problem . but according to me there many organization who follow that culture and able to manage their workforce in a much better way e.g TVS,FORD,SUNDARAM FASTERNERS and there many organization who tried to implement the same but failed to maintain the peace at workplace .Eg ASHOK LEYLAND,TITAN ,PRICOL and many more.
Its not the culture wihich caused the problem. Even here it’s the execution of the system which failed.  

Organization structure:
                Cost and wages is continuously increasing and running the business profitable is a tough task .every company is finding out ways to reduce the operating cost and improve productivity, maruti found its way through temporary workmen. Maruti has temporary workmen strength of more than 50%. Though this can lead to huge cost saving but it may also lead to this kind of disastrous incident leading to huge loss for the organization. Temporary workmen and the regular employee do the same work but they have a huge wage disparity causing disputes inside the organization.
Temporary workmen selection:
People of Haryana have seen a dramatic transformation in the way of living .Land prices have increased as gurgaon has become the industrial hub by which people have become rich overnight selling their lands. Blue collar workers who came from these region lacked tolerance and aggressive in their expectations and even in the way they approached management. Generally people who come for temporary job are the one who struggle for livelihood due to this mismatch organization maruti suffered lot of conflicts and demand raised by them were beyond expectation.
Poor wage hikes and increasing inflation has triggered them further, resulting in an impatient and violence attack in the industry causing a huge personal and infrastructure loss to the organization.

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