[Musa]

One more opinions piece.
A long but worthy read?

http://www.dnaindia .com/analysis/ column_can- india-inc- face-the- truth-about- the-manesar- violence_ 1721167-all

[Slick]

Originally Posted by Musa

One more opinions piece.
A long but worthy read? ......

Superb article, sums up the situation really well. Thanks for sharing.

[download2live]

Originally Posted by Musa

profit is basically blood money –
it won’t say so in the balance sheet or the P&L statement, but it will show
up somewhere, later, if not sooner. It could be the money you pay to
bouncers and private security agencies; or the money you spend on
surveillance equipment; it could be an expensive lockout; or it could be
the brain tumour caused by all the curses of your downsized workforce; or
it could even be the death of one of your managers.

Maruti already paid the price. Raking in losses at the time of Swift launch. And now.

And a very valid point. Contract labour is meant for seasonal activities. Not for the business production which goes on the whole year.

But then we have laws like taking govt permission to fire an employee if you have more than 100 employees.

Our legal system has not kept up with the pace of change. Its almost like India has got AIDS. Incurable.

[sgiitk]

One major issue in allowing a degree of hire and fire is a social security (read dole) network. We have none. I will not be surprised if newer government employees under the New Pension Scheme will also see the reality of meddling by the govt and the left and start agitating soon.

[Gansan]

^^Absolutely correct. The unemployment dole in India is laughable ; ~ Rs 100 a month, I think! Similar is the case with the minimum wages prescribed under law. Crony capitalism, everyone is in cahoots with everyone else.

[Gansan]

Here is something not exactly , but thought provoking on the workings of modern corporates. I wonder in what way they are different from the East India Company? Especially note points no. 14 & 18. This came via email today:

Quote:

This should boggle your mind!! And should scare you as well!

1. At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day.

2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3.. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer, and most can't speak English.

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers ; this is 1,000 more than it
had 5 years ago.

11. This year, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur At a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.

13. The value of product for Wal-Mart passing through the port of San Diego each year is a larger sum than 93% of ALL countries Gross National Product (GNP) .....and that is only ONE port .....one way – that’s how Wal-Mart gets it's stuff.

14. Of the 1.6 million employees, only 1.2% make a living above the poverty level.

15. Wal-Mart's head office is located and centralized in Bentonville. Due to this fact, there are more millionaires per square mile there than any place on Earth.

16. The official U.S. Government position is that Wal-Mart's prices are no lower than anyone else's when
compared to a typical families weekly purchases. That's the view of the statisticians at the Bureau Of Labor
Statistics (BLS) responsible for calculating the Consumer

Price Index (CPI).

17. 92% of everything Wal-Mart sells, comes from China. Another 4% comes from Chinese owned companies in
the U.S. or in 3rd world Countries.

18. Wal-Mart and MOST large companies, take out life insurance on it's employees, without their knowing. If an employee dies, ALL the insurance moneys go to the companies. I.e. An employee making $18,000 per year, dies, and the company might make as much as $1 million. Most often these moneys, coming from what is commonly referred to as "Dead Peasant Life Insurance Policies", is paid out to executives as bonuses. (A common practice, unknown by the average consumer).

19. Wal-Mart now averages a "profit" (not sales) of $36 billion per year.

20. Let Wal-Mart bail out Wall Street. If not, consider shopping someplace else.

Unquote.

[ankur_fox]

Originally Posted by Musa

One more opinions piece.
A long but worthy read?

http://www.dnaindia .com/analysis/ column_can- india-inc- face-the- truth-about- the-manesar- violence_ 1721167-all

Many thanks. The article is hugely insightful and provides a good overall assessment of why what actually happened did happen.

The image of Maruti is a mixed bag now. To think millions of us have driven a Maruti at some point of time, and it effectively was a result of exploitation ... if this is the "Indian Story" I am truly ashamed to be a part of it.

[samarjitdhar]

Originally Posted by Gansan

This should boggle your mind!! And should scare you as well!

Yes it is for here though all these issues with Walmart are pretty well known. They don't pay any health insurance also making their employees rely on government provided health care which again causes more burden on the subsidies. I have failed to get around my head why India is so eager to have Walmart here when these issues are well known. Its not as if the retail industry is facing a huge calamity or something. One favorite argument pushed by all establishment economists are farmers will benefit since all middlemen will be done away with. Thats the most laughable thing I have ever heard. All politicos in the rural and urban areas dealing in agricultural produce live off these middlemen. Its as if all those middlemen out of benevolence will pack up & retire to the Himalayas as soon as Walmart sets foot here. I ask them if middlemen is the problem why don't them remove them now anyway and why do they need the presence of Walmart to remove them (as if they would). Most of those in power assume that Indians have little or knowledge of the state of affairs and they will readily drink the kool aid they will be fed by these morons.

Originally Posted by ankur_fox

The image of Maruti is a mixed bag now. To think millions of us have driven a Maruti at some point of time, and it effectively was a result of exploitation ... if this is the "Indian Story" I am truly ashamed to be a part of it.

This one is from Reuters Maruti Suzuki Manesar plant unrest: Deadly car factory riot sounds alarm bells for industry - The Economic Times. I picked out a particular snippet from this article.

Manesar's best-paid manufacturing workers earn 25,000 rupees ($450) a month, and 1,500 of them, on temporary contracts, earn less than half that. Maruti's employee expenses as a share of net sales are the lowest among the five biggest domestic auto makers in India, at 2.4 percent in the last fiscal year.

So no wonder the workers at MSIL are more pissed off than they are at their competitors. Much of this has to do with our single minded obsession of trying to find cheaper and cheaper products beyond the breaking point of the products themselves. My 10 year old Zen if hit a brand new current day Swift would perhaps get away with minimal damage while the Swift will carry scars for life. The biggest problem with Suzuki in India is their only market now from where they earn profits and to sustain their profits they need to break the rules of the game any which way they can.

[Cesc]

In my eyes the DNA article is blatantly partisan. It is not much of an insight but rather a piece that largely tries to justify what happened at Maruti. Any person who has run/is running a manufacturing enterpirse in NCR or otherwise knows that the single brush with which the author has painted the labour situation does not accurately portray ground realities.

While reading the first paragraph itself I could make out that the overall tone of the article is heavily biased. Statistics (a perpetually abused way to justfy a point) for different variables have been quoted for different time periods - they are simply not comparable. And then real wages are compared against CPI - somebody tell this intellectual that real wages are 'REAL'. The are measured net of inflation.

What a waste of time the article turned out to be.

[joslicx]

While some people here have been slagging Maruti for indifference, heres another japanese Giant that has caught trouble in Manesar

Tension at Honda's Manesar plant, police is present

[carwatcher]

One more analysis. Most of the things are already heard by all of us but still I am posting it because of the lines "By all accounts, the trouble started when a supervisor hurled casteist abuse at a Dalit worker."
I read that many people were doubting as to how the trouble started, so I think these lines have some significance, though one can't say that whether they are 100% true (as normally with media).
Lessons from Violence at Maruti Plant | iGoa

[ankur_fox]

Originally Posted by Cesc

Any person who has run/is running a manufacturing enterpirse in NCR or otherwise knows that the single brush with which the author has painted the labour situation does not accurately portray ground realities.

Hello. I am keen to understand your point of view on this. Are you a manufacturer in the said region? Could you shed more light on other factors from a manufacturer's perspective that could give us more insight on why the Manesar incident happened as it did. Riots and murders are the result of a chronic issue, history is ridden with cases.

Reading the DNA article, it provided a view from the "other side" as it were. The media's perspective is sometimes very singular. The DNA report provided more insight. Maybe you can shed some more light and give us a ground-reality perpective so to speak.

[CARDEEP]

Government has ruled out Naxal links in MS Manesar plant violence. Here is the link to news article on the same:

Govt rules out Naxal links in Maruti plant violence | India - Oneindia News

At least this confirms the political influence/ patronage due to which the emboldened workers went on rampage.

[avi550m]

Any news on when production is scheduled to resume? I have tried contacting all the Maruti dealers in Banglalore for an A-Star Automatic. But none of them had stock, asked when it would come, they replied, "Don't know sir, all A-Star's are being produced at Manesar, and of course, there is no production happening." None could give me a specific date as to when deliveries would start. Any idea if I should wait, or plonk down for an i10 Auto (did not want to initially because of the fuel efficiency figures as reported by fellow BHPians).

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by avi550m

Any news on when production is scheduled to resume? I have tried contacting all the Maruti dealers in Banglalore for an A-Star Automatic. But none of them had stock, asked when it would come, they replied, "Don't know sir, all A-Star's are being produced at Manesar, and of course, there is no production happening." None could give me a specific date as to when deliveries would start. Any idea if I should wait, or plonk down for an i10 Auto (did not want to initially because of the fuel efficiency figures as reported by fellow BHPians).

I was having the same issue with a Swift ZDi booking which was due to be delivered next month. It is in a hung state now with the Manesar lockout. No one knows when the factory will resume production. According to the news sources, Maruti will only be restarting production when 1. the probe completes and the culprits are caught and 2. the government provides sufficient security for the staff to work with peace of mind.
According to MSIL, the plant machinery is not damaged much and production can be resumed anytime without any repair needed. Security and probe are their only concerns.

According to another set of reports, Maruti is planning to fire all the workers who were in that section of factory where the violence broke out, and hire and train a new set of replacement staff before restarting production. I expect at least a month of delay before production kicks off again. By the time that translates to dispatches to other cities, it will be October at the very earliest. Maybe even later.

Originally Posted by avi550m

Damn And here I was having taken over 3 months to td a whole load of cars, only to find out finally that the one I want (A-Star) will not be available. Of course, by Diwali, Honda would have the Brio AT I guess, but I really did not want to wait.

Even I'm in a similar soup. I'll be shifting sides and opting for a Fiat Punto 90HP Sport instead. Without a fixed timeline in place, no point in waiting. I believe a lot of customers like you and me will be jumping ship to other rival brands which are available off the shelf.

Next month's sales reports will be interesting to see how much the Punto sales have gained from Swift, i10 from the A-star, and Etios from DZire.