Singur to Manesar frying pan
- Worker on the run after trying to rebuild life post-Nano
Manesar, July 20: Singur native Shankar Ghosh (name changed on request) suffered his first disillusionment when the Nano factory, where he had trained, left Bengal four years ago.
The second, he says, came soon after he got a job at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar plant in 2010 and discovered the workers had to "work like dogs and face inhuman treatment".
Now the young man is on the run after Wednesday's violence, hiding at an undisclosed location from where he spoke to this correspondent over his cellphone.
He said employees at the Manesar plant — who worked eight-hour shifts: 7am to 3pm, 3pm to 11pm, or 11pm to 7am — faced a "standing order not to spend too much time in the toilet". If they spent longer than five minutes, they received a tongue-lashing from supervisors.
"Anybody caught chatting with co-workers faced a salary cut. We were not even supposed to talk to colleagues while having lunch or dinner. Such was the pressure that we would rush back to work without finishing our meal," Ghosh said.
"We had to work virtually non-stop: we got only 20 minutes' break for lunch or dinner. It was inhuman. I was far happier as a trainee at the Singur Nano plant before it closed down."
Maruti Suzuki managing director and CEO Shinzo Nakanishi, who termed the clash a "bad dot" in the company's history and called it the biggest challenge in his career, made a reference to employee relations today.
Asked if there was a communication gap with the workers, he told PTI: "If there has been a lack of communication with the workers, then we need to improve it."
The company had said in a statement on Thursday that the problem at the unit, by any account, was not an industrial relations issue over wages or working conditions. "Rather, it is an orchestrated act of mob violence at a time when operations had been normal over the past many months," the statement had said.
Ghosh, a resident of Beraberi village in Singur, had undergone a course on automobiles at the Industrial Training Institute before receiving hands-on training at the Tata Motors' Pune and Singur plants. He had had high hopes then, like many other young men in Singur and Bengal.
Ghosh was shattered when, after he had worked for seven months at the Nano factory's engine shop, Mamata Banerjee's land agitation forced the small-car project out of Bengal. After brooding for two years, he travelled the 1,640km to Manesar to find a job.
He said he still was a casual worker at Manesar despite the training he had undergone.
Maruti Suzuki has just over 1,000 permanent workers in a workforce of around 3,200, the majority being contractual and casual workers or trainees, most of them in their 20s. Ghosh said he received a salary of Rs 7,000 while the permanent workers were paid Rs 18,000 upwards.
"I live in a nearby village and spend Rs 2,000 on rent. I would have had to shell out another Rs 2,000 had I not shared the room with a co-worker," Ghosh said.
He would not say whether he was part of the workers' band that allegedly vandalised the plant and set some offices on fire, causing the death of a general manager.
"Please don't ask me anything about it. We are very scared. The police are looking out for us and may implicate me in the case," he said before disconnecting his cellphone.
Singur to Manesar frying pan
