With nearly one lakh workers having struck work inGurgaon, the lid has blown off the glittering growth story of Delhi’s neighbouring areas.
With nearly one lakh workers having struck work in the industrial hub of Gurgaon, south of Delhi, the lid has blown off the glittering growth story of Delhi’s neighbouring areas.
Areas such as Gurgaon and Faridabad in Haryana and Noida in Uttar Pradesh were developed as industrial areas because of their proximity to Delhi. The mushrooming of industry, especially auto parts manufacturing units (around 90 of them find space in Gurgaon) has seen a heavy influx of workers, and trade unions trying to network among them. These predominantly rural-turned-industrial areas are seething with social and economic turmoil.
Leading the strike is the All-India Trade Union Congress (Aituc), the trade union wing of the Communist Party of India and the main trade union body in Gurgaon. Aituc leader and member of parliament Gurudas Dasgupta claimed that most firms in Gurgaon are against these workers setting up trade unions. “The main trigger for the strike was an application by the workers of two factories, RICO and Sunbeam, for a trade union. All those who signed the application were sacked or suspended from work,” he said.
Dasgupta insisted that the managements of most companies keep a private army of strongmen to keep the workers in line, a charge refuted by the managements. “We suspended the workers because of gross indiscipline and bad behaviour and we stand by that,” said Surinder Singh, senior vice president (human resources), RICO, “In fact, workers who were not keen to join the strike were harassed by others.”
According to Dr SK Sasikumar, senior fellow at the VV Giri National Labour Institute, the demand for trade unions is a natural fallout of industrial growth. “Such demands grow from this kind of development,” he said.
Gurgaon has a history of violent strikes and protests. In 2007, a lathi-charge at the Hero Honda factory in Gurgaon led to many injuries and a parliamentary debate where Dasgupta waved a blood-soaked shirt in the well of the Lok Sabha.
The next year, LK Choudhary, a manager with Italian auto company Grazia Transmissio, was lynched by angry workers. The strike in the RICO factory has been on for at least a month before it came to a head on October 18 with the death of a worker, Ajit Yadav.
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