Depriving contractual workers of their right to be members of trade unions is at the heart of the labour struggle at Bellsonica Auto Component India Pvt. Ltd., a tier-I supplier to Maruti Suzuki, in Manesar here, observed the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) in its fact-finding report. The PUDR’s report is on the workers’ ongoing relay hunger strike at the company.
Stating an increase in contractual workers at the company, the report, “A Long Battle for Justice”, said, excluding them from trade unions amounted to exclusion of a majority of workers from the protection of labour laws and the right to collective bargaining.
The workers’ union alleged that workers were suspended or dismissed while the talks were on with the Labour Department and the management.
Relay hunger strike
The suspended Bellsonica workers have been on a relay hunger strike outside the factory in Haryana’s Manesar since the beginning of this month. The workers said they would continue the strike unless reinstated.
The company has 126 long-contract workers, 400-odd six-monthly contractor workers and over 200 trainees of different categories compared to only 192 long-term contract workers in 2017, said the PUDR, a Delhi-based organisation working for civil liberties and democratic rights.
In 2021, the company’s workers’ union had granted membership to a few contract workers. In December 2022, the Labour Commissioner, acting on the firm’s complaint, issued notice to the union to explain its position or have its registration cancelled.
Putting the workers’ protest in context, the report pointed out that the company “has a past of arbitrarily terminating workers, even before the pandemic” and was issuing show-cause notices to the workers under the guise of verifying their documents, including education proof, and dismissing them on this pretext.
The union offered to help the company in the process and sought the criteria it had established for recruitment at the time of hiring, the notification regarding this, and documentation and proof of the company’s policy for recruitment at the time. However, the company failed to provide it, said the report, adding that the process itself was heavily skewed in the favour of the company.
“Between July 2021 and June 2022, the company issued show-cause notices to 29 permanent and four contractual workers – stating that their documents were ‘fake’. All the workers who were issued notices had been working for a long time at Bellsonica – eight years or more. Since December 2022 onwards, the company started terminating workers on these grounds,” said the report.
Demands of PUDR
The PUDR has made nine demands in its report, including reinstatement of the terminated and suspended workers, addressing the collective and legitimate demands of the union, and withdrawal of the letter by the Labour Commissioner questioning the inclusion of contract workers as union members. It also demanded that all companies, including those in Manesar, must implement the legal provision of “equal pay for equal work”.
