Maruti Suzuki

Reasons- There are around 3,500 to 4,000 workers employed in the factory, but their status differs significantly. Around 900 to 1,300 workers are permanent workers, around 800 to 1,000 trainees, around 400 apprentices and around 1,000 to 1,200 ‘temporary’ workers hired through contractors. Maruti Suzuki more or less matches the general conditions in Gurgaon and Manesar, where around 70 to 80 per cent of the work-force is ‘temporary’.
Wages differ according to contractual status. Permanent workers are paid between 13,000 and 17,000 Rs, trainees get between 8,000 and 10,000 Rs, temporary workers are paid around 6,500 Rs and apprentices around 3,000 Rs to 4,200 Rs. Compared to the automobile industry in the global North wages at Maruti Suzuki are obviously low.  
It is not only that wages are comparably low, they also come with fairly strict conditions attached. The basic salary for permanent workers and temporary workers is the minimum wage of around 5,000 Rs, the rest of the wage are ‘incentives’. If a worker is few minutes late, then his half day salary is cut. If a worker takes one day leave, he looses about 1,500 Rs to 2,000 Rs as salary cut in various forms of incentives and allowances. If a worker takes two day leave, he almost looses all the incentives.
Maruti – Suzuki has an in-house union, Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU) at its Gurgaon Plant for which elections have not been conducted for a long time. Workers at the Manesar - Industrial Model Township (IMT) plant feel that the MUKU is dominated by the management and is not taking up workers’ issues such as wages, intensification of work and regularisation of trainees and contract workers

June 3, 2011 -   On June 3 workers in Maruti-Suzuki Manesar - Industrial Model Township (IMT)   plant applied for registration of a new union, the Maruti Suzuki Employees’ Union (MSEU), at Chandigarh. Knowing workers’ initiative for a new union, the management forced and threatened workers to sign on a blank sheet allegedly... [continues]

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