Sher Singh, Shveta Sarda

Of Work Riots,PoliticalPrisoners, andWorkersRefusing toLeave theFactory –TranslatedThrough thePages ofFaridabadWorkers News(2005–2015)

Since October 27, 2005 workers have walked thestreets with placards. When we stand on pathsthat lead to factories at the start of the morningshift, many stop.                     We exchange stories, ideas, and glances;the restlessness of management rises.1

          The labyrinthine paper trails of the clothmill where I, Ram Sagar, worked for thirty yearsand, like thousands of others, thought myself tohave been a worker, have revealed themselves asbelonging to seventeen different companies. Thisstarted in 1992 when, a year after having beendismissed, I filed a case with the labor court. Iwon in 1999, but the company didn’t comply withthe court’s order. In 2001, the laborcommissioner issued a summons against thechairman-managing director. It’s 2005 now, andsixteen summonses and a nonbailable arrestwarrants haven’t managed to produce a soul incourt. We have learned that factories belong tono one; no one owns them; names keepmultiplying in documents.                     Ownership is only a masquerade; owners donot exist.2

          There are 2,500 of us in our factory, whichproduces auto parts. Hired through fourcontractors, we are all of a similar age. We makeup 90 percent of the factory’s workforce, and getalong very well with one another. In January 2007,we gathered at the gate and refused to enter thefactory. Production stopped for two days. Themanagement singled out those amongst us whothey decided had incited the strike, anddismissed them. We stopped work again inAugust.                     It isn’t a question of a few instigatingmany.3

          On Friday, December 17, 2010, workers –permanent, casual, those hired throughcontractors – stopped the production line in atwo-wheeler production factory. The scooter line,motorcycle line, welding shop, and machine shopcame to a standstill. Workers from B-shift joinedA-shift workers. 1,800 permanent workers and6,500 workers hired through contractorsgathered inside the factory. While many workersleft in company buses that afternoon, manystayed inside the factory through the night.Around midnight, the company declared the nextday a holiday. Buses didn’t arrive the nextmorning with those who had left for the night,and 150 to 200 policemen entered the factory. Afew months later, on April 8, 2011, workers on thenight shift in a health care–product factorystopped work. When morning shift workersweren’t allowed to enter the factory, the 300 to350 workers who were inside refused to come

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These auto parts stand abstracted from a production line and the work force that created them.

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out. Workers outside the factory gates passedthem food over the walls. On June 4, 2011, atshift change, workers on A-shift didn’t leave, andworkers on B-shift entered the factory but didn’tbegin work. They phoned C-shift workers.Permanent workers, trainees, apprentices, andworkers hired through contractors – aroundthree thousand workers – gathered inside thefactory. Ten days passed. The company hemmedin the factory by raising miles and miles oftarpaulin sheets around it.                     Workers refused to leave the factory.4

          A few months later, on October 7, 2011, at 4p.m., workers from the A- and B-shifts in thissame factory gathered inside the factory yetagain. Workers at around ten affiliate factoriesthat make car engines, motorcycles, and otherautomotive parts also stopped work and refusedto leave the factories. While work resumed thenext day in some of these factories, workers infour factories did not resume production andstayed inside the factories. Kitchens were set up,since companies had shut down the canteens.There was no work tension. No agonizing aboutthe hour of entry or exit. No stress over catchinga ride on a bus. No fretting about what to cook.No sweating over whether dinner had to beserved at 7 or at 9 p.m. No anguishing over whatday or date it was. October 7!–14 was the besttime. We talked a lot with each other aboutthings that were personal. We became closer toeach other during those seven days than we’dever been.                     It was as if we were seeing each other forthe first time.5

          Workers at a die-casting factory didn’t turnup for work on October 16, 2011, a Sunday. Thenext day they came to the factory, stayed insidethe entire day and night, and didn’t work. OnOctober 21, workers at a footwear companystopped work at midday. On October 24, 250workers in the rotary, dyeing, sampling, andfinishing departments of a dying and printingfactory stopped work and gathered at the gate.                     The riddle of “what is it that workers want”keeps deepening.6

          It was a clear day in February 2012. “Do youknow,” the official from the fire departmentasked, holding up the fire extinguisher, “what gasis inside this?” When no one responded, theofficer answered his own question, “CO2 gas.This gas can extinguish any fire, whether causedby electricity, or an accelerant like petrol orthinner. This gas can act on anything that cancatch fire, be it rubber or cloth. If you hear thehooter, stop work and run towards an open spaceimmediately.” The next day the hooter, which

usually sounds at the start and end of a shift, orat lunch break, sounded at an odd hour – at 10a.m. Everyone stopped work and rushed out ofthe factory. HR called security, and securityassured them there was no fire. Workers stoodwhere they were, whispering and chatting. Theystopped work again at midday the next day, andagain at 10 a.m. the day after that.                     Everything, everywhere is flammable, andanything can be a spark.7

          Over the years, thousands of workers fromindustrial areas in and around Delhi have beenarrested and are today’s political prisoners. OnJuly 18, 2012, after their actions in June andOctober of the previous year, workers in theautomobile factory attacked factory buildingsand managers. The government responded bystationing six hundred commandos in theindustrial town. The number of politicalprisoners rose: 147 workers were arrestedwithout bail and, further, arrest warrants wereissued for sixty-five workers. The company fired546 of its permanent workers and the 2,500workers it had hired through contractors. And, asif conceding finally that the situation wasn’t oneof “few and many,” in a letter that managementsent each permanent worker they fired, theywrote, addressing each one by name: “We can nolonger employ you because you have acted bothas instigator and participant.” In the words of aworker:                     “It would have been quite something if whatworkers did in one factory on July 18 hadhappened across the entire industrial town.”8

          It’s July 2012 and while the management ofour factory, which makes medical and surgicalequipment, has been missing for a few months,there are other factories where the managementmay as well be missing. There’s a metal factorywhere workers don’t argue anymore: they juststretch the ten-minute tea breaks that thecompany gives them at 10:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m.,and 6:30 p.m. to half an hour each. Supervisorsand managers hover around, but they keep theirdistance. On November 9, four hundred men andfour hundred women workers in a footwearfactory encircled the managing director at thefactory gate. Two hundred police personnellooked on, and finally retrieved him by usingbatons and water canons at 9 p.m.                     If there ever was a consensus, it has beenbroken. This isn’t the time to make petitions; it’sthe time to make proposals.9

          On February 21, 2013 at 10 a.m., in anindustrial area thick with garment-manufacturing units and printing presses, ahandful of workers stepped out from their factory

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The front page of issue 199 of Faridabad Workers News, January 2005.

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The front page of issue 325 of Faridabad Workers News July 2015.

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and started shouting slogans. This drew outaround fifty workers from surrounding factories.Within moments, another 1,200 joined them. By10:30 a.m., the frightened managers of twenty-four factories declared the end of the workday.Within the next half-hour, as more and morefactories across the industrial area shut downone after the other, workers gathered outsidefactory gates. Across the entire industrial area,thousands pelted stones at factory buildings andbroke car windshields and placed boulders ontheir seats. In the words of a worker:                     “Who’s to say what spurred the women onmore than it did the men, or where the laughteron every face that day came from.”10

          On April 16, 2013 at 10 a.m., tailors workingon the second floor of a garment factory stoppedwork, came down, turned the guards out andlocked the main door of the factory from inside.Then they switched the power supply off,shutting down work on all four floors. In August,when banks sealed one of the production units ofa footwear company, the chairman and thedirector of the company asked the hundredworkers they had shifted out of that productionunit to help them break the lock and resumework there. The workers refused. Starting onAugust 30, guards employed by a securitycompany started a sit-in at the companyheadquarters, as well as outside their work sites– the Australian embassy, the offices of UNDP,UNICEF, and the World Bank. At 8 a.m. onSeptember 22, workers in a factory thatproduces plastic injection molding componentsgathered outside the factory. Workers from twoother automotive-parts factories supportedthem. They resumed work at 1 p.m. Four dayslater they stopped work again and gatheredoutside the factory. On the morning of January23, 2014, groups of workers went from onefactory to another. Workers poured out offactories. They even went into the directors’office and asked them to come out. Factory afterfactory closed. Workers went back into thefactories when police arrived. When the policeleft, they came out again.                     A simple laugh at the correct moment canproduce a crack in the strongest of edifices.11

          In 2014, friends came with lots of stories.Around the end of January, a charge sheet froman auto factory in Pune, Maharashtra circulated.In it, the management had charged its workers:“You were laughing, singing, dancing on theproduction line, changing your position on theline at your own will, stopping the production lineon purpose, and you refused to listen tosupervisors. This is a violation of the terms ofagreement between the company and the union.”

In March, another trend was being praised:workers in garment factories across Bangladeshstopped work suddenly and routinely. Productionstopped for many days. There were no leaders;there was no one to negotiate and come to anagreement with. In May, we gathered over tea tolisten to a friend who had returned after threeyears from a construction site in Saudi Arabia.“There are constant tussles at the constructionsite,” he said. Skirmishes are routine – betweenworkers and foremen, as well asbetween workers and engineers and managers.Workers, whether we are from Bhagalpur orGorakhpur, Delhi or Karachi, Lahore or Ludhiana,Dhaka or Pokhra, live together, and we talk toeach other all the time in the dormitories – aboutthe lateness of wages, minutes snatched awayfrom a break, the arrogance of an engineer, theshortcomings of the director, an argumentfollowing an increase in work speed, an accident,a warning letter issued to a coworker,nonpayment of overtime, or the cooling in thedorm. The tipping point is uncertain, unknown,but always near. Things can spiral out of controlany moment. One day, we suddenly decided wewouldn’t leave the dorm and go to work. Thevehicles that came to pick us up went backempty. Managers arrived a few hours later andasked us to return to work. No one agreed; noone went. One day turned into ten. On theeleventh day, police arrived and fired shots in theair. No one left the dorm. The same thinghappened the next day, and the next. Suchrefusals happen around six to eight times a year.Sometimes for a few days, and sometimes for anentire month, workers refuse to leave thedormitories.                     With every story, trends multiply. Factoryrebels on the move are joined by those who donot leave the factory, and then by shop-floorrevelers, and soon by those who do not leavetheir dormitories to go to work.12

          On November 4, 2014, all of us workers in anelectronics factory who had been hired throughcontractors gathered outside the factory at 6a.m. Police, security guards, contractors, andmanagers blocked our path to the factory. We setup a tent 150 meters away from the factory gate,and we were shown a court order forbidding usfrom going any closer. Upon being approached byleaders of political groups with differentdispositions, we gave them the stage, but withthis caveat: “We’ll listen to everyone, but we’ll dowhat we want.” One leader stood at themicrophone and invited us to join his politicalgroup. “It’s nice of you to have come,” we said,“but we have seen, and understood well, whatyou did in another factory. Goodbye.” Anotherleader spoke at great length about the need to

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change the government. “We respect your age,”we said, “but not this talk about deferringchange to the future.” When groups objected to aspeaker who came on stage next, we countered,“This stage is ours. We will decide who can, orwon’t, speak.” As the protest stretched on andcontinued into March 2015, many among usjoined different factories. We have activelinkages between us. And we have decided,wherever we work, we’ll keep discussions openbetween us and won’t let any middlemen comeinto the relations we engender.                     Whether alone, or in a cluster, or as a crowd,we become nodes that both relay and occasionthe new in entire industrial zones.13

          "

Sher Singh is the cofounder and editor of FaridabadWorkers News (Faridabad Majdoor Samachar), amonthly workers’ newspaper published from MajdoorLibrary, Autopin Jhuggi, Faridabad since 1982. Shveta Sarda is an editor and translator based inDelhi.

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      1Michael Aram Exports workers,Delhi, “Workers’ Placards inDelhi,” Faridabad WorkersNews 209 (November 2005): 1–4.All the issues of FaridabadWorkers News, and occasionaltranslations into English, can beaccessed on the newspaper’swebsite.See http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.in Published since1982, this monthly newspaper iswritten and distributed by adispersed and expandingformation, in the industrialzones of more than three millionfactory workers. 13,000 copiesare printed each month, whichtravel in the National CapitalRegion of Delhi – Okhla,Faridabad, Gurgaon, Manesar,Bahadurgarh, Gaziabad,Sonepat, and NOIDA.

      2“Courtroom, Alias House ofBetrayals,” Faridabad WorkersNews 213 (October 2005): 4.

      3Delphi Automotive Systems Ltd.worker, Delhi-Jaipur Road,“From Gurgaon,” FaridabadWorkers News 231 (September2007): 4.

      4Honda motorcycle and scooterworker, IMT Manesar, “Wobbly,Shaky Honda,” FaridabadWorkers News 271 (January2011): 4; Harsoria HealthcarePvt. Ltd. worker, Gurgaon,“HarsoriaHealthcare,” Faridabad WorkersNews 275 (May 2011): 4; MarutiSuzuki India Ltd workers, IMTManesar, “From Honda to MarutiSuzuki: The Ways of CompaniesToday,” Faridabad WorkersNews 277 (July 2011): 4; “The Joyof Living Experience WithWorkers ofMaruti–Suzuki,” FaridabadWorkers News 279 (September2011): 1.

      5Maruti-Suzuki, SuzukiPowertrain, Suzuki Casting,Suzuki Motorcycle, Satyam Auto,Bajaj Motor, EnduranceTechnologies, Hilux, Lumax,Lumax DK, and Dighaniaworkers, IMT Manesar, “SuzukiManesar Diary,” FaridabadWorkers News 280 (October2011): 3–4; Maruti Suzuki IndiaLtd. worker, IMT Manesar, “WithCalculations, WithoutCalculations,” FaridabadWorkers News 291 (September2012): 1, 4; “A Conversation WithStudents That Didn’tHappen,” Faridabad WorkersNews 304 (October 2013): 1, 3, 4.Trans. in “Towards aConversation With Students:Rethinking the Figure of theWorker.”See http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.in/2014/06/towards-conversation-with-students-re.html

      6Oswal die-casting worker,Lakhani (Vardan Group) worker,and Shivalik Prints Ltd. worker,Faridabad, “Life Scripting New

Time” and “Workers inDelhi–Gurgaon–Faridabad,” FaridabadWorkers News 281 (November2011): 1–2.

      7Lakhani (Vardan Group) worker,Faridabad, “Everyone is Active –Everyone Must Act – And LetOthers Know Too,” FaridabadWorkers News 286 (April 2012):4.

      8Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. worker,IMT Manesar, “WithCalculations, WithoutCalculations,” FaridabadWorkers News 291 (September2012): 1, 4; “The Actions ofWorkers of Maruti–SuzukiManesar From 4 June 2011 to 18July 2012 andBeyond,” Faridabad WorkersNews 296 (February 2013): 1–2;“Astonishments That DestabilizeConsensus,” Faridabad WorkersNews 306 (December 2013): 1.

      9Eastern Medikit Companyworker, Gurgaon, “It’s Importantto Search for NewWays,” Faridabad WorkersNews 289 (July 2012): 3; SaketFabs worker, Faridabad, “A LookInside Factories,” FaridabadWorkers News 290 (August2012): 2; Lakhani (Vardan Group)worker, Faridabad, “InsideFactories andWorkplaces,” Faridabad WorkersNews 294 (December 2012): 3.

      10Okhla Industrial Area worker,Delhi, “20–21 February in OkhlaIndustrial Area: 4,000 Factories,5,000,000 Workers,” FaridabadWorkers News 297 (March 2013):1, 3.

      11SMS Export worker, Delhi, “ALook InsideFactories,” Faridabad WorkersNews 299 (May 2013): 2; Lakhani(Vardan Group) worker andShivalik Prints Ltd. worker,Faridabad, “A Look InsideFactories,” Faridabad WorkersNews 303 (September 2013): 3;G4 Security Solutions worker,Delhi, “G4 SecurityWorkers,” Faridabad WorkersNews 305 (November 2013): 4;Auto decor worker, IMT Manesar,“A Glimpse of Cracks andLeakages InsideFactories,” Faridabad WorkersNews 305 (November 2013):2; Baghaula-Prithla IndustrialRegion workers, Palwal,Haryana, “Groups of WorkersWent From Factory toFactory,” Faridabad WorkersNews 308 (February 2014): 4.

      12“Laughing, Dancing, Singing onthe Assembly Line,” FaridabadWorkers News 308 (February2014): 4; “No One’s Coming tothe Table,” Faridabad WorkersNews 309 (March 2014): 3;Construction worker forArabtech Construction, “SaudiaArabia: The ThirdWave,” Faridabad WorkersNews 312 (June 2014): 1, 4.

      13Asti Electronics workers, IMTManesar, “A Conversation WithTemporary Workers,” FaridabadWorkers News 322 (April 2015):1, 3, 4.

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