Graziano Transmissioni and the
Cheer-Leaders of Capital
‘The chief executive officer of a
Greater Noida-based gear manufacturing company [Graziano Transmissioni India
Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of an Italian TNC] was lynched to death inside factory
premises on Monday, allegedly by a group of dismissed workers.’
‘“Around 125 dismissed workers armed with iron rods barged into the factory
and went on rampage. They broke computers and machinery and smashed windowpanes.
When Lalit tried to pacify them, they assaulted him with rods,” board of
director Ramesh Jain told Hindustan Times.’
See report here
‘Companies in the area are known to employ contract labour in large numbers,
though the law clearly states that such workers can be used only for non-core
functions and not on the shop floor.’ says
another report.
They’d never had it so good. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the party
had gone on. Unrestrained. Unrestrained in its vulgarity and its opulence. Like
vultures on a feast, they had descended in hordes. All the land was theirs –
whichever and wherever they wanted. They paid no taxes. Initially, they evaded
taxes. But then wiser counsels prevailed and governments themselves exempted
them. They were to be given tax-holidays and incentives to keep them with us.
They looted the money of nationalized banks. Labour was gagged, tied hand and
foot and thrown at their feet – to serve them like the slaves of yore. The
cities were ‘cleaned up’ for them and their cars. Flyover, expressways, glitzy
malls and car parks took over city spaces. For them and their consumers. The
poor had no right to be in the city. Thus arrived the new era. The Judge, the
Bureaucrat, the Politician – all marched in a procession, announcing its
arrival.
The party began. Like the din of the dance floors of New Delhi’s upstarts,
the noise levels kept on rising. Louder and louder. Shriller and shriller.
Anybody who raised any question was a ‘party-pooper’. They knew it. They knew
they were partying and they knew that decibel levels inside the dance houses had
to be kept up to levels where nothing else could endure. Nothing but mindless
gyrations to the trumpet and brass-band of Capital would be allowed. You could
enter. Anybody could, but only on that condition. Mindlessness.
And so the neo-classical hacks and mediots, cheer-leaders of capital (see for
instance, the
Indian Express lead
today), got into the act, dancing to the jingle of money, as the neon
signs of global hypermodernity gradually lit up the night skyline of Indian
cities. They told us how indispensable capital was ‘for us’. Without it, we
would be condemned to the dust-heap of history. The state had to stop
interfering with ‘the economy’: capital should be allowed to hire and fire
workers at will; it should be allowed the best conditions to make profit, else
it will ‘leave us’ – bereft and Fatherless – and ‘go away’. We would have ‘no
jobs’. No industry. No highways. No Malls. No glittering Neon Signs. Truly the
End of History (at least, the end of ‘our’ history). Pages of newspapers and
‘screens’ (and the air around!) of televisions all filled up with mindlessness.
Entire newspapers and channels became ‘Page 3’. Book reviews vanished. Literary
and other sections of Sunday newspapers disappeared – all in the service of
cultivating mediotic mindlessness. (The appearance of art in the media in more
recent days, is another phenomenon, yet to be studied. It is geared to a large
emerging corporate market, not to ‘art’ as such, but more on that some other
time).
And so the cheer-leaders told us, we must give them special concessions: Give
them Special Economic Zones, where they can live in peace, till such time as all
of India becomes an SEZ. Give them cheaply acquired land; free them of the
bondage of Indian laws of trade and commerce; let them make their own airports
inside these Zones and then, the party will really take-off into the high skies.
(Not for one moment do champions of free-market even see the irony of this
blatant call for all round state intervention – but that is not our point
today). So much has this idea of capital’s ‘indispensability’ become common
sense, that governments are expected to throw in tax-payers’ money to bail-out
bad businesses. Industrialists have begun to see such intervention as ‘natural’.
Thus, one of the reports on the NOIDA affair cites a horrified entrepreneur: “If
a private business is not doing well, the government does not foot the bill or
take care of the losses. Who will support industry during a bad cycle?” said
Sarbjit Singh, chairman and managing director, Noble group, which manufactures
consumer electronics at Noida.’
And why not? Hasn’t the crumbling US Empire recently been bailing out
bankrupt mega investment banks with the tax payers’ money? That is the model
after all.
So, the government must intervene to ensure the best terms for capital, else
it will run away. But if it intervenes to fix wages, ensure implementation of
labour laws (almost always violated by capital), then
this is ‘unwarranted ’state intervention’, ’socialism’ and what have you. This
is a logic that has been accepted by all including the successive governments
and there are, in fact, rare exceptions like Oscar Fernandes who would at least
take this opportunity to remind the NOIDA industrialists that the recent
unfortunate incident in Graziano Transmissioni should be taken as a warning.
Understandably, there was a furore over Fernandes’ statement - among ‘India Inc’
and its cheer-leaders. Poor Fernandes had to apologise.
So let us put in the word that Oscar Fernandes had very mildly tried to. We
can even extend the warning beyond what he intended to. The writing on the wall
is there for everybody to see. The Party might well-nigh be over.
There are threads here that connect Singur, Nandigram, Jagatsinghpur,
Kalinganagar and such other land related issues to the struggles that have of
late been breaking out in urban industrial areas in recent times. We will return
to these presently, but for the present let us just look at what the writing on
the wall says.
Bengal To Delhi: Land rows singe industry, read the
front-page headlines of a leading daily some
days ago. Its main point:
‘First it was Nandigram, then Singur. Then the emotive issue of aquisition
of agricultural land for industry land triggered unrest in Gurgaon and Noida.
Now, protests have caught up with the capital. ‘
‘Hundreds of farmers from five villages of the north-west district have
taken up cudgels against the acquisition of 1,450 acres of agricultural land —
a face-off that may just end up haunting the state government ahead of the
Assembly elections later this year. ‘
The report went on to say that ‘on Friday, the farmers blocked the entry
and exit points of the deputy commissioner’s office for the second consecutive
day during office hours and declared that they would continue doing so until
the government gave them compensation for their land at market price.’
The intense struggles around the land question are of course, widely
acknowledged by now. What is not so clearly visible is the situation in the
cities, in urban industrial areas. Three years ago, we did see the violent
struggle of and police repression against the workers of Honda Motorcycle and
Scooter India Pvt Ltd. Just to refresh our memories, it was precisely when the
workers started raising issues of ill-treatment and workload and eventually
formed and registered a union - the Honda Motor Cycles and Scooter India
Employees Union (Reg. No: 1811) affiliated to All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC)
- that the company declared an illlegal lockout. The Honda
incident (see
details here) had revealed only the tip
of the ice-berg.
Now, in similar, highly exploitative conditions, we are witness to another
unfortunate violent incident. The workers of Graziano allege resort to devious
and illegal methods on the part of the management. Says a
Business Standard report:
‘On their part, a number of Graziano workers expressed their ire at being
replaced by contract workers. As such workers are not on their rolls,
companies make substantial savings on their wage bills. Some of these men said
that the Graziano plant was being run by 400 contract workers in two shifts
for the past three months.’
Incase, we thought this was a one-off incident instigated by some mad trade
unionists, let us also cite the following from today’s
Indian Express report:
“Accidents” like that on Monday are not new to the industrial hub, say
NOIDA indutrialists. ‘Vinod Kumar Vajpayee, president of the Noida Phase-II
Industries Association, said: “There are many other companies that have seen
violence over the last few years.” ‘
* Workers of Jaypee Greens in Greater Noida attacked the company’s office
in 2004 and killed one person.
* Similarly, employees at Daewoo attacked the office of the company after
it went bankrupt. Some 125 workers and 10 policemen were injured in the
clashes.
* Hindon Rubber, another company that was based in Noida, wound up
operations after similar protests by employees earlier this year.
‘Most clashes in the past, industrialists say, have been because of
expelled or suspended [read retrenched or laid-off] employees.’
We can go on multiplying examples but for the present let us stop with these
indicative instances. Let me underline that these indicents suggest a more
widespread mood that is spreading rapidly across the country. It might merely be
the beginning of a wider phenomenon. Just as the story of struggles against land
acquisitions did not begin with Nandigram and were in fact preceded by
innumerable struggles and an accumulation of struggle-effects, so these
instances might simply presage the coming of another, industrial Nandigram.
Seriously mistaken are those cheer leaders who belive that Graziano-NOIDA is
the outcome of ‘militant trade unionism’. On the contrary, what both Honda and
Graziano like incidents reveal is the utter inefficacy of trade unions whose
only job has been to channelize workers discontent into legal and legally
acceptable forms of struggle. They reveal the powerless of the mass of workers
who, in situations of despair, initially seek out the trade unions to
help them but eventually cannot be contained within their sterile and
ritualistic methods. These incidents reveal that workers discontent, hitherto
hostage to the formal or informal compact between the managements and trade
unions, is struggling to break free of this stifling control. That said,
whatever our criticisms of trade unions, we must also underline that their
ineffectivity (at last of some of them, since not all are ’sold’ to managements)
is at least partly a consequence of the new order that was instituted in the
beginning of the 1990s. In that order, as I said above, no avenues
of airing grievance were left open. In that new order, the powers that be rode
roughshod over popular sentiments and grievances with supreme arrogance - ably
backed by the Judiciary. Recall how the deacde long peaceful struggle of the
Narmada Bachao Andolan was reduced to ineffectivity.
Ineffectivity therefore, is not simply the result of faulty trade union
strategies. It is also the index of the fact that all avenues of communication
are now closed - that power has become a one-way traffic that simply flows top
down. It is an elementary fact that any student of power will point out, that it
is precisely in this moment of power’s becoming-opaque, that it
begins to expose itself to maximum threats - from without and within. For
power’s opacity is first and foremost, opacity to itself. It ceases to be able
to see itself and the new threats that it poses to its own being.
Now, the important question that links Nandigram to Graziano: Who are these
workers? Who are those who flock into the cities in search of jobs and end up as
workers in Grazianos or such other companies? They are those uprooted from their
habitat, from their land and livelihood and ‘hurled upon the urban labour
market’ (Marx). Some become workers, soem eke out a living as hawkers and
vendors and many remain unmeployed and get sucked into networks of crime. Those
uprooted in the long winter that set in in the beginning of the 1990s, people
our cities.
It is this Capital and Industry that will apparently deliver us from
joblessness. It is for them that the CPM-brand Left wants SEZs in West Bengal
and Kerala - in the fond hope that they will provide jobs to the youth of their
states. Those who live on agriculture - may be at subsistence levels - will now
be thrown to the wolves, where they neither have decent wages nor any job
security. But that is Progress - according to pundits of the Left bourgeoisie as
well as the cheer leaders.
Courtesy: Kafila
http://kafila.org/2008/09/25/graziano-transmissioni-and-the-cheer-leaders-of-capital/
Oscar says sorry for remark on Graziano CEO's
killing
In an urgent effort at damage control, the government convened a high level
meeting to discuss labour minister Oscar Fernandes' insensitiv
e remark that the murder of L K Chaudhary, the Greater Noida-based CEO of an
Italian firm, was a warning to private enterprises and ensured that the minister
tendered an apology.
Fernandes' reaction to the brutal murder of Chaudhary at the hands of laid off
contractual employees, kicked off a storm of protest with industry condemning
the comment and media reports flaying the minister . Worried the remarks would
only worsen India's image among current and wouldbe investors, foreign minister
Pranab Mukherjee, defence minister A K Antony and home minister Shivraj Patil
met Fernandes and suggested that he withdraw his remarks.
Click here to read full article
CPI (ML) Liberation
Graziano Factory, September 22 : Outcome of
State-corporate Industrial Violence and Denial of Industrial Democracy
A CEO of a prestigious MNC is killed – at the hands of a ‘maddened mob’ of
workers...It’s a lynching, a murder” – cry the voices of corporate industry and
corporate media in pious horror after the CEO of Italian MNC Graziano was killed
on September 22 in the course of a scuffle with agitating workers. The police
machinery rushes to round up, arrest, beat up and jail hundreds of workers.
The Labour Minister, in a surprising moment of truth, let the cat out of the
bag. He mentioned the ‘unmentionable’ fact – that companies like Graziano
habitually violate labour laws – including minimum wage laws; restrictions on
contract work; working hours; right to unionise; and basic human rights
liberties of workers at the workplace. And he said that the lynching of the
Graziano CEO ought to serve as a ‘warning’ to industry to mend its ways. Of
course, corporate industry and the Government which is its faithful servant
could not bear such a home truth to be told – and Oscar Fernandes has been
forced to issue an ‘apology.’ However, the fact remains that even the
establishment has had to recognize that the September 22 incident at the
Graziano factory marks an explosion of the pent-up anger and resentment of
workers in the face of systematic exploitation and suppression of democracy in
corporate industrial enclaves.
The ‘official’ version of the lynching calls for a serious investigation by an
impartial agency. In enquiries by Trade Unions, workers have testified to the
fact that Graziano had illegally laid off regular workers; employed contract
workers; enforced highly exploitative work conditions. Nine months of peaceful
protests had been ignored; and workers’ attempts to register their union had
also been denied. On the fateful day, the management reportedly had plans to get
goons to beat up a delegation of workers – but when workers assembled outside
the factory realised this plan, he tables were turned. Many workers today are in
hospital with grievous injuries – brutalised by police and private goons.
Graziano’s story is unfortunately not a unique one. Corporates in the ‘new’
industrial areas like Noida, Gurgaon, or Pantnagar (SIDCUL) in Uttarakhand are
notorious for their rampant violations of labour laws, repression of workers’
basic rights and violence unleashed by the management. Labour Commissioners
routinely ignore such violations. In Gurgaon, Pantnagar, Greater Noida, and
other such industrial enclaves, there is a clear pattern of state-corporate
industrial violence and utter lack of any industrial democracy. The same region
is also noted for widespread corporate land grab, peasants’ protests which are
met with police bullets and batons. Workers’ and peasants’ resentment as they
watch corporate profits soar – while they pay with their exploited and underpaid
labour, livelihood and land. They watch corporate employers and real estate
sharks violate labour and land-acquisition laws with impunity, with the
connivance of the State. Their democratic protests, seeking implementation of
labour laws, are crushed ruthlessly, while the corporate violators of the law
are given sops and subsidies. In the days to come, one can expect to see growing
solidarity between, and united resistance of the struggles of workers and
peasants in this region.
Full Article at:
http://www.cpiml.org/pgs/ml_upd/VOL11/11_40.html
AICCTU* Fact-finding Report
A fact-finding team of the AICCTU led by AICCTU National
Secretary Santosh Roy and V K S Gautam that visited the spot after the September
22 incident at the Graziano factory at Greater Noida found that out of the 1200
workers employed in the factory, only 500 were regular workers, and the rest
were on contract. Graziano paid its regular workers Rs. 3200 a month for working
12 hours a day; contract workers were paid Rs. 2200 per month, and denied
various rights like PF, ESI, double overtime etc...The workers are never local
residents – but always vulnerable migrants from other states. And nine months
ago, the company began laying off most of its permanent workers, and employing
contract workers in their stead. This was in blatant violation of the law which
clearly states that contract workers can be used only for non-core functions and
not on the shop floor.
Not only that, workers were forbidden from leaving the factory premises during
work hours. They were expected to pay and eat at the factory canteen, where meal
rates had been hiked. And they were regularly subjected to threats, abuse and
even violence. Goons and musclemen were employed in the guise of an unregistered
‘security agency’ called Awake and used to keep workers in line.
Workers had formed a union – but the registrar of unions (who is usually in the
pockets of the corporates) turned down the application of Graziano workers not
once but thrice. The workers had conducted a peaceful agitation lasting 9 months
– but all authorities from the Labour Commissioner to concerned ministers to the
Italian embassy had turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the evidence of
illegalities by the company. Leading agitators were targeted and any worker who
dared to lead struggles promptly lost his job.
On the day of the incident, workers say that in fact, police remained absent at
the behest of the Graziano authorities, who planned to get the leading elements
of the agitation beaten up after getting them inside the factory premises on the
pretext of talks. They say that while the workers’ delegation was inside and
being assaulted, one worker ran out to the gates (which had been shut) and told
those assembled outside that their comrades within were being beaten. Then,
workers stormed in and the confrontation took place which resulted in the CEO
getting killed.
Workers’ organisations and human rights groups must be allowed to visit the
Graziano premises and investigate the circumstances of the incident of September
22. A judicial enquiry should be ordered to probe the incident. The arrested
workers must be released and charges against them dropped pending the enquiry.
All laid-off workers must be reinstated in the factory. And a National Enquiry
Commission including representatives of leading Trade Unions should be set up to
conduct a comprehensive enquiry into the work conditions at all industrial units
and enclaves (industrial areas) all over the country. The Commission should hold
Public Hearings of workers in all major industrial areas. And all employees
found to be violating labour laws should be sternly prosecuted.
*AICCTU is a central trade union associated
with CPI (ML) Liberation group
World
Socialist Web Site
Indian CEO killed after negotiations with group of
dismissed workers go awry
By Parwini Zora and Kranti Kumara
29 September 2008
In the course of heated negotiations between a group of laid-off contract
workers and the management of Graziano Transmission India, the company's Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director, Lalit Kishore Chaudhary, was
killed Monday, September 22nd by a blow to the head.
The circumstances surrounding Chaudhary's death have yet to be clarified. There
have even been suggestions that Graziano's business rivals hired professional
killers to pose as workers and foment a confrontation that they could then use
as a cover for a "hit."
Full Article:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/ind-s29.shtml
Links
in other languages
Solidarietà operai della fabbrica Graziano Trasmissioni,
India
Un manager di una famosa multinazionale italiana è stato ucciso? Si è trattato
di un volgare assassinio a colpi di spranga, come si lamentano industriali e
mass media? Perchè sono stati arrestati centinaia di operai?
Il Ministro del Lavoro indiano, Oscar Fernandes, in un primo momento, ha
rilasciato dichiarazioni "sorprendenti". Ha menzionato fatti "innominabili".
Full Article:
http://www.pane-rose.it/files/index.php?c3:o12900