Life and work at the Maruti car factory - A worker's account of what happened at Manesar
My name is… let that be. Maruti Suzuki is out to get me, not because I did anything but because they want to put virtually every worker in jail, even those who belonged to the third shift and were not even present when violence took place in the Manesar factory on 18 July. I was present there and will tell you what happened, but to understand it you will have to let me begin from the beginning.
I am 26 years old. I come from a village in Panipat. My father is a daily wage labourer. After finishing class 10 in a government school, I enrolled at the Panipat Industrial Training Institute (ITI). After two years of learning to handle machines at the ITI, I joined Maruti’s Gurgaon plant as an apprentice in 2006. The apprenticeship lasts a year. I was anxious before I first entered the plant, because I knew many from Panipat who have done that before, and they all used to say there’s so much work, and it’s such heavy work, you won’t be able to do it. I was determined to prove them wrong. I soon realised what they meant, the work pressure can’t be described, it has to be experienced.
First they took a day or two for the joining procedures after which I found myself getting training for another day or two in their Apprenticeship Wing. This was followed by some training for another day or two on the line, and then they left me to work, on my own. Apprenticeship means training, but there was no training. Apprentices are free labour for Maruti because even though we get a stipend, it is reimbursed to Maruti by the government. The `2,800 a month was its way of helping the ITI products get a job.
In the factory, we make cars. The parts come from various companies, hundreds of vendors make those parts for Maruti and we fit them to the frame of the car.
I was taken aback by the Maruti way. All of us, from apprentices to permanent workers, had to work eight hours, which did not include a 30-minute lunch break. We got two tea breaks on company time, seven minutes each, to manage tea, snacks and the toilet, all together. It takes a minute and a half just for the tea to arrive. You could either have tea or take a leak, but soon we learnt to do both together. Teacup in one hand, we’d run to the toilet. Before returning to work we also had to wash the tea cup before putting it back into our lockers.
I did the ITI course and landed in Gurgaon to work. But I had no idea it would be such back-breaking non-stop work for eight hours. The salary didn’t justify it either. But here I was, this was life, I began to accept it. After a year of so-called apprenticeship at Gurgaon they gave me a job at the Manesar plant, started just a few months ago. The rules were the same. I wake up at 4.30 a.m., the bus arrives to pick us up at 5.20 a.m., reach the factory at 6.30 a.m. The factory is about 25-30 km from where most workers live in Gurgaon. The shift begins at 7 a.m.
I did the ITI course and landed in Gurgaon to work. But I had no idea it would be such back-breaking non-stop work for eight hours. The salary didn’t justify it either. But here I was, this was life, I began to accept it. After a year of so-called apprenticeship at Gurgaon they gave me a job at the Manesar plant, started just a few months ago. The rules were the same. I wake up at 4.30 a.m., the bus arrives to pick us up at 5.20 a.m., reach the factory at 6.30 a.m. The factory is about 25-30 km from where most workers live in Gurgaon. The shift begins at 7 a.m.
Some months ago they changed the shift timing to 6.30 a.m., so we have to wake up even earlier. This was because some workers come from Delhi too, and they have to beat the early morning traffic between Delhi and Gurgaon. The transport isn’t free, they deduct `500 a month from our salary. The lunch and tea are subsidised—around `350 is deducted from our salaries. Tea breaks are in the rest area next to where we work on the shopfloor, but lunch, which is on our time, is in the canteen. Some workers have to walk quite a distance to the canteen, so 30 minutes isn’t enough to grab lunch or go to the bathroom. One worker being late can stop the entire conveyor belt, so that worker gets a lot of flak from the managers.
So now we wake up at 3.45 a.m. and the shift begins at 6 a.m.. Only technically, though. They start the morning meeting and the warm-up exercises 15 minutes before, from what is our time, not included in their eight hours. The point of the morning meeting is to take names and count who made what mistakes, who left a loose part, who missed a part in the conveyor belt, causing a delay of how many seconds in the production line. The day begins with humiliation. You did this! You did that! I want your explanation in writing. If this happens again we’ll give you a warning letter. And today we want these many cars done, no excuses shall be entertained. Then the exercises begin on the shop-floor, the conveyor belt is soon switched on.
While I had to install parts, some are also in checking and repair. First, the metal sheets are converted into the car body by machines, which is assembled by workers in the weld shop. Then it goes to the paint shop, where the process is semi-mechanised. In the Assembly, the parts are fitted together, beginning with the wiring and meshing, then the brakes and pedals and the steering and so on. The car comes to the worker on the conveyor belt and depending on what your job is to add to it, it stops for 35-40 seconds on an average. So if a worker’s task is to add a brake and pedal, then that’s what you do all day, with 8-10 bolts in every car, car after car, 40 seconds per car. The result is a bit like a dance move, the same move, non-stop for eight hours. The screw gun in one hand, fix it, run back, pick up another bolt, move back to the car. A bit like aerobics.
The Manesar plant, I am sure, is the world’s fastest car production facility. The conveyor belt doesn’t really stop, we move with it and rush back to the original position in time for the next car. We don’t control the machine, the machine controls us. We dance to its tune. The result is that you could miss a car or two if you dared to drink water or scratch your back. Such things must be done by us along with fitting the parts.
If in such a schedule you feel thirsty, it takes 45 minutes to steal time to drink water without missing a car. Workers pass water bottles on the conveyor belt. The problem may sound comical but it isn’t funny when you miss a car. Imagine being asked by the supervisor at the end of the shift why you missed one car. To give an explanation that I missed it as four seconds were wasted scratching my back… is this what a man deserves? Conversations like these take place after the shift, when we are summoned and scolded, given warning letters and so on.
If in such a schedule you feel thirsty, it takes 45 minutes to steal time to drink water without missing a car. Workers pass water bottles on the conveyor belt. The problem may sound comical but it isn’t funny when you miss a car. Imagine being asked by the supervisor at the end of the shift why you missed one car. To give an explanation that I missed it as four seconds were wasted scratching my back… is this what a man deserves? Conversations like these take place after the shift, when we are summoned and scolded, given warning letters and so on.
It is not considered human to err. Why aren’t you able to work? we’re asked. Aren’t others working? Why did you have to go to the bathroom? God forbid if you have an upset stomach! The manager tells supervisors to discourage workers from drinking as they will then want to go take a leak. Supposing they figured out that one is able to steal time to drink water between the work, next day such a worker would find the work suddenly increasing.
They study us through CCTV cameras, constantly trying to squeeze more work out of our hands. How dare you manage to save the time to drink water! Five free seconds! That is not acceptable to them. If a worker says he really has to rush to the bathroom, the supervisor would say I don’t allow it, now do what you can. This would result in peeing in the pants, sometimes defecating too. That is the worker’s answer to what he can do against the system.
Their concept of “overtime” is `17—whether you are made to work overtime for one hour or two, you get the same fixed princely sum! Maruti does not want us to waste a single millisecond of the eight hours for which it pays us such a miserly sum. This overtime would be divided in two parts—an hour before the shift and an hour after. Even if you were a minute late reaching the factory, even in “overtime”, they would deduct half day’s salary! With such overtime in winters a worker would get six hours of sleep, considering the traffic jams those days at Honda Chowk would delay us returning home on our way back.
Their concept of “overtime” is `17—whether you are made to work overtime for one hour or two, you get the same fixed princely sum! Maruti does not want us to waste a single millisecond of the eight hours for which it pays us such a miserly sum. This overtime would be divided in two parts—an hour before the shift and an hour after. Even if you were a minute late reaching the factory, even in “overtime”, they would deduct half day’s salary! With such overtime in winters a worker would get six hours of sleep, considering the traffic jams those days at Honda Chowk would delay us returning home on our way back.
Asking for leave is a sin. Supposing a worker’s father dies and he wants to rush home, he is asked, “Why don’t you finish the shift and go? By the time you reach, the cremation would be over anyway.” The maximum you can be away if your loved one has died is three days. After that, you’ll be deluged with phone calls asking if you intend to stay in the village forever.
Other companies are better, but they tend to copy the Maruti way. Such is Maruti’s confidence in their way that they have passed it on to their vendor companies as well. Such are the conditions in which we make four Maruti cars: Swift, Swift Dzire, A Star and SX4. I think we were freer under the British Raj.
Such authoritarian treatment of workers led to the realisation that we need to make a union. We already had one, which we call the “management union” as it is their showpiece union, with their men in it, and never known to have elections. This management union was actually from the Gurgaon plant, and we in the Manesar plant would be forced to sign on paper showing our membership of it. We wanted our own union, a real union, one that would take up our issues. And that is what Maruti did not want. This is the crux of the matter...
Such authoritarian treatment of workers led to the realisation that we need to make a union. We already had one, which we call the “management union” as it is their showpiece union, with their men in it, and never known to have elections. This management union was actually from the Gurgaon plant, and we in the Manesar plant would be forced to sign on paper showing our membership of it. We wanted our own union, a real union, one that would take up our issues. And that is what Maruti did not want. This is the crux of the matter...
Read more: http://fountainink.in/?p=2660&all=1#3
