THE MARUTI STORY_Sukriti Sinha_HRLP023

“Unions are born when the management is not able to take care of their people.” In India, unions are an important part of a manufacturing unit. This is because there is a communication gap and honest relationship between the management and the workers which has to be bridged by the Union. While a Union bridges this gap, it is not always for the good. This is exactly what happened in Maruti Manesar plant. It faced the most violent situation and the angriest workforce that we could have imagined. It started with a strike which was also the reason for the intervention by SOIL.

It was quite evident from the interaction of Yogita and Shailendra Sir with Maruti Associates that these Associates had lost their trust and confident in their management and were very angry and agitated. There was also a sense of agony that could be seen from their behaviour and dialogue. I believe, that the reason for this extreme situation Is not one, but a combination of many which had piled on with time. These are as follows:

1.  Their basic hygiene factors were not being met – washroom and canteen were very far and the breaks were only for 7.5 minutes which was not enough to go and come back on time
2. They were being micro-managed and there was too much involvement of the Japanese in their work – Japanese way of working is very different. They are highly committed towards their nation and they expected the same from these workers but this is not the Indian style of working and this clashed
3. There was no Union at Manesar plant – All the grievances had to be communicated to the Gurgaon plant and then had to be addressed there which took a lot of time and were mostly not addressed due to this reason
4. Overload, Underpayment – All the hot selling models of cars were moved to Manesar, thereby, causing pressure on volumes and operations on Manesar workers who had to work overtime. These workers readily worked overtime but were paid lesser overtime wages as compared to Gurgaon Maruti workers.
5. Immaturity of Supervisors – The supervisors were of the age group of 24-28 years which was similar to the age group of the workers and hence could not handle situation with maturity.
6. SOIL was involved in the situation when most of the damage was done and it was a bit too late to make things 100 % right.
7. There was a big Communication Gap - First the workers got agitated with supervisors and went to the management. When the management gave them a little support, they decided to go directly to the management for all their issues bypassing the supervisors. This made the supervisors also feel agitated and left out.
8. Young workforce belonging to the same region - The workforce was young, aggressive and ambitious. This was the first job for most of them. They compared their wages and working hours with that of Honda plant workers in Manesar and their working conditions with that of Maruti’s Gurgaon plant. There were lot of differences that they could see and felt that they were being discriminated and cheated.

So, according to me we cannot point our finger at one cause for this strike and later, violence. It was a plethora of causes that led to this mishap. We can sum up all of this as a “Management Failure to understand something that was happening right under their nose”. Unfortunately by the time the management realised this, it was a bit too late and the mistrust and anger was in an extreme stage which came out in the open in a very sad and unforgettable manner on July 18^th, 2012.