Yazaki India assures to take terminated workers back after protests by AICCTU
Illegally terminated workers of Yazaki India Pvt Ltd plant of Lakkenahalli of Ramnagara district of Karnataka have been staging a protest under the banner of AICCTU outside the factory gate since 26th December. A rally to the Ramnagara District Commissioner office demanding mediation was also conducted. After 16 days of the movement, the Yazaki management assured in a tripartite conciliation meeting with Deputy Labour Commissioner that the workers will be taken back. They informed that re-joining letters to 45 workers has already been sent and the remaining will be subsequently taken back.
Yazaki is a Japan based company that manufactures automobile wiring equipment. It has a clientele of Maruti Suzuki, Toyota, Mahindra etc. This unit of the company earns super profits riding on the backs of around 3000 workers employed currently out of which only 130 workers are permanent employees, rest are all either contractuals or “trainees”. The Yazaki unit has an illegal policy of recruiting workers guised as “trainees”, whose job roles are same as that of the permanent employees but with lesser salary and no job security. There are around 1500 such “trainees” out of which 53 were abruptly terminated without even a notice on 13th December. Later, when 100 other workers came in solidarity with them and protested, they were identified and terminated. These workers have all been working continuously for various periods extending to three years. Realizing the need of a union, 107 out of these 153 terminated workers organized themselves under the banner of AICCTU and started their movement against this injustice.
The contractual and “trainee” workers in this factory are denied benefits extended to the permanent workmen, including production incentive, leave facilities, bonus, shoes/uniforms etc. These workers do overtime work without double the pay and are forced to work for continuous double (16 hours) or sometimes even triple (24 hours) shifts. More workload is enforced on them with passing time. The workers who are staging the protest are distributing pamphlets to the existing employees and also raising these working condition related concerns amongst their colleagues.
Yazaki being a transnational company based out of Japan, they have their tentacles all over the third-world nations with 90% of their workforce from outside Japan. In the national context, such huge foreign investment on one hand pushes the domestic capital out of the market and on the other hand carries out super-exploitation of the impoverished Indian cheap labour force. This “reserve army of labour” from the third-world are given wages lower than sustenance level with no job or social security. With the new labour codes being gradually implemented such abrupt terminations of workers would become a day-to-day affair in ‘New India’. This precarity and injustice can only be fought by the path shown by the Yazaki workers, that is, by getting organised under the red banner. It is only the struggles of the working class that have earned them dignity and rights.
