Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Oct 4: Today was the 16th day of relay hunger strike of Honda workers here at Jantar Mantar near the Parliament House. Even though the health condition of some of them is regularly deteriorating, they are yet to get any signal of resolution from the state government of Rajasthan or the Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India (HMSI). The workers have earlier protested outside the HMSI plant in Tapukara area of Alwar district in Rajasthan.
The workers began an indefinite hunger strike in the national capital on 19th Sep, demanding the company to reinstate all the terminated and suspended workers and withdraw all alleged fake cases filed against 70 workers.
Why are they protesting?
Speaking to IndiaTomorrow.net, Deepak Mahala, Vice President, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters 2F Workers Group said, “We have to work there in a repressive condition and we were facing many issues like neither our salaries were being enhanced as promised from the Honda management nor the contractual employees were confirmed as permanent employees. So, we filed a petition with the management seeking permission to form a union on August 6, 2015 to protect the contractual workers from exploitative conditions at the plant but we were refused to do so. Between September 2015 and February 2016, the company terminated thousands of contractual workers.”
In February this year, HMSI management allegedly terminated the services of more than 2,000 contract workers and trainees and suspended 102 regular workers for trying to form a union at the Tapukara plant of the company. Trouble erupted when the workers held a protest at the plant and they were lathicharged by the police.
Talking about the government’s response over the issue Deepak Mahala said, “We met Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and local BJP MLA Rajendra Singh Rathore in April this year. Recently we gave a letter to Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya but only verbal assurances were given to us.”
“Earlier we held protest in Jaipur and Alwar too, but to no avail,” he added.
He also alleged that some employees “betrayed” the movement and got a union registered under the banner of Bharat Mazdoor Sangh.
“Some employees close to the management betrayed us and recently got a union registered under Bharat Mazdoor Sangh. Now the Honda Management is adamant not to reinstate us, So, we are planning to meet D L Sachdeva, national secretary, AITUC (All India Trade Union Council) to give a memorandum to Union Labour Minister as our genuine demands are not being met,” said Mahala.
