The workers, protesting under the banner of ‘Maruti Suzuki Asthayi Mazdoor Sangh', demanded that reliance on temporary workers for regular production in all plants of the company be ended.Casual and non-permanent workers of Maruti Suzuki staged a protest outside the office of the deputy commissioner of Gurgaon on Friday, alleging illegal labour practices and pay disparity.
They also demanded the reinstatement of employees who were terminated after the violence that occurred at the company's Manesar plant in 2012. The July 18 incident had led to the death of the company's HR manager and injured over 100 people. Following the incident, as many as 546 permanent and over 1,800 contractual workers terminated from their jobs.
In 2017, 31 workers were convicted, 13 of whom were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and attempted murder. As many as 18 were convicted for rioting, trespassing, and other offences. Over 450 workers, who were proven innocent, are demanding reinstatement to their posts.
The workers, protesting under the banner of ‘Maruti Suzuki Asthayi Mazdoor Sangh', demanded that reliance on temporary workers for regular production in all plants of the company be ended. They also sought equal pay for equal work and making temporary employees permanent at all plants, including the new one at Sonipat's Kharkhoda. Proper training of Maruti student trainees was also being sought.
Ravinder Dahiya, a protester, said Maruti Suzuki employs more than 34,918 workers, out of which only 18% are permanent, 40.72% are contractual, 21.6% are temporary and 21% are student trainees (MST) and apprentices.
"Workers are trapped in an infinite cycle of hope and despair as the company hires them for short spans, from seven months to one or two years, and then releases them, promising to call them again after a few months," said Dahiya.
Trainee workers (TW) are first hired as TW1, of which around 10% are re-hired after a year as TW2. Out of TW2 too, only a handful are retained later as TW3. The hiring of contract workers (CW) also follows the same process. This leads to a massive pool of skilled labour being in suspended and partial unemployment for years.
Another protester, Surender Mallik, said the massive pay gap between permanent and non-permanent workers was another bone of contention for the workers. The permanent employees get an average monthly salary of Rs 1.3 lakh while non-permanent employees get Rs 18,000 to Rs 30,000.
"A large part of the workload is borne by the non-permanent workforce but there exists a great disparity in the perks enjoyed by them and the permanent workers," Mallik said.
The permanent workers who were terminated in 2012 have been on an indefinite sit-in at IMT Manesar since Oct 2024, and their agitation was instrumental in the build-up of the present protest.
TOI reached out to Maruti Suzuki for comment but got no response.
