More feedback from
the Gurgaon Workers strikes, the Brahma Kumaris are seen as ‘
cogs of the system’.
An idea about what the workers were striking against is
here.
If the extreme poles of managements strategy to defeat a workers’ collective is to either replace them as collective producers or to repress them with brute force then both poles have proven fragile during the Maruti dispute.
In this social atmosphere the ‘means of repression’ had to be more subtle, but they revealed the wide social front-line which workers have to face:
From the desks of the state administration to the metal barriers set-up by the company and staffed with private security guards, from the riot cops to the individual sms send by management to workers’ company phones, calling them back to work – these mobile phones had been a company present for 10 million produced Marutis.
From the drunken land-lord thugs and local labour contractors attacking them in their ‘villages’ or in front of the factory with guns to the ‘soothing’ spiritual brain-wash of Brahmakumaris, hired by Human resource management to ‘heal’ the workers from their anger after the occupation.
From the ‘panchayat’ leaders of the Manesar villages, linking up with the multi-national Haryana regime, to the investment fund advisors asking for ‘de-risking’ of Maruti’s production location. From the media regime, which portrays them as villains or victims to the production manager who orders to shift them away from their old work-mates to other lines and departments. And last but not least all those institutionalised leaders of trade union apparatuses who promise and postpone and mobilise and call off, all rather in the interest of their own organisations than to strengthen the collective power of the workers.
But we think that all these ‘cogs of the system’ cannot explain the paradox that although Maruti’s position had been difficult and the losses significant, the workers did not manage to turn the (company) regime’s weaknesses into their own victory.
03 Nov 2011