Deepal Jayasekera
About 1,800 autoworkers at the Ashok Leyland plant in Ennore, Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, are conducting a sit-in strike to demand higher bonuses. The action, which began last Friday, is part of the growing resistance of autoworkers to a rolling wave of plant closings and mass layoffs throughout the global auto industry amid falling sales and signs of another worldwide economic downturn.
Workers are demanding a 10 percent increase in bonuses and have rejected the company’s offer of 5 percent, which does not come close to matching higher cost of living expenses. After the collapse of talks last Wednesday, the Ashok Leyland Employees Union (ALEU) was forced to call the action in an effort to appease the anger of rank-and-file workers.
Chennai-based Ashok Leyland is the second largest heavy commercial vehicle maker in India. During the 2018-19 fiscal year the company saw its profits rise by 21 percent to 21.95 billion rupees ($US309 million) from 18.14 billion rupees ($255 million) the previous fiscal year.
The strike takes place as transnational corporations are seeking to force autoworkers to pay for the growing crisis of the auto industry in India and around the world. Having faced the worst sales drop in a decade, car companies in India have destroyed about 350,000 jobs in recent months and have threatened to wipe out one third of the current 3 million assembly and auto components job. The country’s largest car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki, has halved its production targets, and two days ago the company announced that it would not renew the contracts of 3,000 temporary workers at its factories.
“This is a part of the business; when demand soars, more contract workers are hired and reduced in case of low demand,” Maruti chairman R. C. Bhargava declared to TV news channels.
This is a part of a global jobs massacre being implemented in auto plants throughout the world, including those in the US, Canada, China, Mexico, Germany and India.
Autoworkers in China, South Korea, the US, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, the UK, Romania, Turkey and Hungary as well as in India have fought pitched battles over the past decade to defend their jobs and conditions against the assaults of companies. Thousands of workers at the Maruti Suzuki car assembly plant at Manesar, Gurgaon in the northern Indian state of Haryana waged a series of militant struggles, including strikes, protests and occupations against sweatshop labor conditions and the contract labor system, in 2011. They have been subjected to a brutal company-government vendetta, which resulted in the life imprisonment of 13 workers on framed-up murder charges.
In order to defend the profit interests of crisis-ridden auto companies, the Tamil Nadu state government led by All India Anna Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam (AIADMK), declared in late June that the auto component industry was a “public utility service,” effectively banning strikes in the sector. Tamil Nadu is a major location of auto component industries—with Chennai known as “India’s Detroit”—and accounts for more than 30 percent of auto parts exports from India. Facing widespread opposition from workers to this blatantly anti-democratic measure, the Madras (Chennai) High Court issued an interim order on August 1 temporarily halting the implementation of the state government’s decision. A petition to stay the decision had been filed by Pricol Thozhilaler Otrumai Sangam, the union at auto parts maker Pricol in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. However, the court has set August 29 for a further hearing in the case.
Although its profits rose sharply last year, Ashok Leyland has begun experiencing a decline in sales and profits. In the quarter that ended in June, its volume declined by 6 percent. The company’s sales, revenue and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) are expected to decline by 7.5 percent, 5-7 percent and 19 percent respectively from the same quarter last year.
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