09 March 2017

Maruti Workers Union Appeal


Dear Comrades,
We are writing with an appeal, and update on the legal case. The Maruti Suzuki workers case ('State of Haryana vs Jiyalal & Others') is going on since July 2012 through a maze of evidence-less lies and clear pro-corporate anti-worker intent. Since 2012, 216 workers face possible convictions by a pro-corporate system, besides the terminations (and labour cases) of 546 permanent workers and 1800 contract workers, and a separate case of offences against 111 more workers in Kaithal since 2013.
The date for the Judgment from the Trial Court, the Gurgaon Additional District and Sessions Court, has been set for 10th March 2017. We are apprehensive and have grounds to believe that it will be a politically motivated anti-worker Judgement. The hand-shaking between the Maruti Suzuki company management and the Police, administration, the government and Judiciary could not be more clear as in this case. We are apprehensive about a Pricol-type 'life sentences' and long-term convictions against hundreds of workers and are preparing with a call for unity of all workers and all pro-worker forces. We appeal to you from the Provisional Working Committee, Maruti Suzuki Workers Union to be present in the Gurgaon Sessions Court premises on the day of the Judgement in the case on the 10th of March. We also appeal to you to be united and take solidarity actions in support of Justice for all Maruti Suzuki workers facing repression by the Central and State Government and the Company.

Update on the Legal Case as it Stands during the Final Arguments:

Context: We had 3 strikes in 2011 where we raised voice against the system of exploitation in the factory, and had to face continued management attacks on our Trade Union rights with complicity of the administration. We finally formed our Union – Maruti Suzuki Workers Union, Manesar (Reg. No.1923) on 1 March 2012. In April, we submitted their Charter of Demands, where the Union said abolition of contract worker system as one of its central demands, among others. This kind of assertion of our rights against their exploitation was not being taken lightly by the Company management, as it challenged their power and profits. They wanted to attack the Union through their power and conspiracy, which resulted in the incident on 18 July 2012, of a clash inside the plant and the death of an HR manager. Since then, 147 workers have been in Jail without having got bail for more than 3-and-a-half years on charges ranging from murder, attempt to murder, rioting, looting, setting fire to private property and various Sections of the IPC. Currently, 11 workers continue to be in jail without bail, which includes the members of the then Union Body. 66 more workers other than the 147 have similar charges under various non-bailable sections. Along with this criminalization of labour, 546 permanent and 1800 contract workers were terminated from their jobs, whose labour cases are also ongoing. 2500 working class families faced constant repression and penury on top of exploitation of the workers in the factory which created the basis for the management-labour conflict. We have had a movement against this regime of exploitation and repression till today.
The final legal arguments in the Maruti Suzuki workers Trial case concluded on 18 February, 2017 with arguments by Advocates Vrinda Grover, Rebecca John and RS Cheema against the State Prosecution. Find here some facts on the case as it stands in the Courts:

1.      It was established during the final arguments that there is no direct evidence linking ‘murder’ or ‘setting fire’ to the factory on any worker. No prosecution witness could establish any worker involvement in the same. Neither was any CCTV footage produced by the Prosecution even after Defence asked for the same. The management person Deepak Anand from GM Vigilance who filed the FIR against the 55 Maruti workers named therein, could not identify any worker. The witness Salil Vihari who named the main accused Jiyalal, could not identify him.

2.      On 18 July 2012, the incident of conflict happened at 7.20pm. But Police was called by the Company management at 11am itself, but Police was not allowed inside until the entire incident came to a boil. It has already been said by workers that it was a pre-planned conspiracy on behalf of the management so that a conflict is generated and workers can be implicated on this basis. Bouncers in workers clothes were also brought inside in the morning itself without IDs.

3.      The FIR mentions that 400–500 workers with rods, batons and sticks in hand entered the HR and beat the management but no witness mentions these weapons. Instead all the witness uniformly said that workers were carrying shockers and door beams – each doorbeam and shocker weighing over 4kgs, so around 4000kgs of weapons were supposedly recovered. On top of this, Police show that a major section of workers took all these weapons to their respective homes and kept them under their beds and almirahs. For another set of workers, Police showed that they caught 20 workers simultaneously siting under a tree conveniently possessing all these weapons.

4.   Also, witnesses had said that each manager was beaten up by 4-5 workers with these weapons with intention of murder. The also stated that no one came to rescue them. But if this was so, then how did they manage to rescue themselves with no serious injury? To this, they said that the workers themselves let them off, which clearly is no intention to murder! The witnesses testified that all of them uniformly stopped the attacks with their left hand. In the MLC done on management injuries show absurdities as a dental root canal as injury!

5.      It has been established how 89 of the 147 workers have been arrested on the basis of names given alphabetically by 4 contractors. None of these workers were identified. Court documents show witness Virendra alias Rajender Yadav has named 25 workers such that all workers' names fall in the alphabetical range of A-G. Another witness contractor Yaad Ram testified that he saw 25 workers rioting, all of whose names fall in the next range G-P. Witness Ashok Rana names 26 workers who were allegedly rioting whose names range from P-S. The final witness Rakesh of Tirupati Associates who supplied 900 contract workers to MSIL testified to allegedly seeing 13 workers whose names, continuing the alphabetic sequence, are in the range S-Y.

6.      The lists of workers arrested thus was provided by the Company to the Police, and not on the basis of its own investigation, pointing to an active collusion between the two.

7.      On ‘setting fire to the factory’:  There was no evidence whatsoever as to setting fire and no witness could explain how the fire was lit and who did it. First, there were contradictory statements as to where the fire was lit – in the conference (M1) room in the first floor, or outside it, or in the ground floor. Awanish Dev’s dead body was recovered from the M1 room, and the witnesses claimed that the room was lit on fire from inside where fighting was taking place, but while testifying they argued that the room caught fire from the outside.

Fire lit and burnt everything down but the match box (a new one) was conveniently unharmed and lying there to be discovered. This recovery of the match box itself was not immediate. At the place of the incident, when the security on-watch, Om Prakash, went on 19th July 2012 in the morning at 6 am, to the M1 store with a photographer nothing was recovered. Then on that very day at 12 pm FSL authority D. Sonu searched and recovered a new match box and a door frame, and where the room was entirely burnt there was no sign of the matches itself being lit. He neither signed the recovery report nor did he testify in court on the recovered matches and door beam.

On the setting of fire inside the M1 room, of the 16 witnesses that had stated that the room was lit on fire, and 3 witnesses took names of those who did it. None of these witnesses could identify any worker or wrongly identified.

8.      According to the postmortem report, Awanish Dev’s death was due to asphyxiation. The injury he had is below the knee on the right leg, which cannot lead to death which proves that neither is there a murder case possible against the workers nor is their intention to murder in this case. So Sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) clearly do not hold. At max, only 2 people can cause such an injury, while 216 workers have been accused of murder and attempt to murder.
Thus even though this is, on the face of it, pertaining to the case on 18 July 2012 where a general manager of the company Awanish Kumar Dev died in the conflict that erupted that day after a Dalit worker Jiyalal was suspended from duty unilaterally when a supervisor attacked him and gave casteist abuse. But as is evident by now, it was a conspiracy from the management against assertion of workers for our Trade Union rights.
Even so, the considerations of the Judiciary are suspect as is evident from one of the High Court orders in May 2013 rejecting bail said “this is one one of the unfortunate incident that has lowered the reputation of India in the world. Foreign direct investment is likely not to happen due to fear of growing labour unrest”. The State has already spent crores of public money all these years against the workers. As per RTI, the government paid Advocate KTS Tulsi R.5.5 crore in just 2 years - s. 11 lakh per appearance - just in the Gurgaon Additional District and Sessions Court, Mr Tulsi's three assistants Rs. 66000 for each appearance and "clerkage" of over Rs. 1 lakh for his expenses each appearance. If this was not enough, instead of the Public Prosecutor from the State, Private Prosecutor from the Company, Vikas Pahwa again kept the 'last word' on their behalf in the Sessions Court Gurgaon during the final arguments.

Will there be Justice for Maruti Workers?

The 147 workers who have spent over four years in Jail, and 11 who continue to be jailed without bail since July 2012, the total implicated 216, the 2500 families, those who have lost their family members in that course of time or not been able to see their children grow up for those years or have not been able to part of the joys and sorrows of their family for that time - will there be justice?
In this industrial belt, workers struggle have happened from Rico Gurgaon (2009) to Shriram Pistons Bhiwadi (2014) to Honda Tapukhera (2016) and countless others against regime of exploitation on workers by the profit-hungry MNCs. Management. In all these cases, to control the simmering tension, there have been outright repression through terminations, violence, murders, lathi-charges, false criminal cases and prison terms by the Police-administration-government and local goons on the company’s payrolls. In current workers struggles, while the management says, “we will make Maruti-like situation for you” (repress you like the Maruti workers), the workers also say right back, “This can turn into a Maruti-like situation” (Workers will wage a collective movement relentlessly against exploitation-repression). We say this will be a ‘political judgement’ since this judgement becomes a measure and signal of which version of ‘maruti-like situation’ stands.
On 1st March 2017, we marked 6 years of the formation of our Union with a gate meeting in front of the factory in Manesar, where thousands of workers and Unions participated. After this,  the company has moved a stay order against 10 terminated workers in the leadership of the Provisional Working Committee, MSWU to stay 2kms away from the company gate. On 7th March, various Unions met in Gurgaon and resolved to hold factory gate meetings and give warning letters to their managements in solidarity with Jailed workers which happened on 8th March. There is lunch and dinner Boycott in various factories on 9th March. Hundreds of workers will gather in the Court premises at 10am and in the afternoon on 10th March.
We appeal to you to be united and resist this onslaught by capitalists and the government, and stand with the workers class movement in this crucial and decisive situation. We appeal to you from the Provisional Working Committee, Maruti Suzuki Workers Union to be present in the Gurgaon Sessions Court premises on the day of the Judgement in the case on the 10th of March. We also appeal to you to take solidarity actions in support of Justice for all Maruti Suzuki workers facing repression by the Central and State Government and the Company.

Provisional Working Committee,
Maruti Suzuki Workers Union

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