Support grows for framed-up Maruti Suzuki workers in India
By
Jerry White
21 March 2017
Popular anger is growing in the Manesar-Gurgaon industrial belt on the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital city, after a court meted out life sentences to 13 workers who were framed up on murder charges after a July 2012 labor confrontation at the country’s largest car assembly plant.
Just hours after the sentences were read out in Gurgaon District Court, 30,000 workers at Maruti Suzuki plants and supplier factories in and around Manesar carried out a one-hour “tool down strike, ” despite management threats of an eight-day pay cut. The action halted production at the Maruti Suzuki assembly plant in Manesar, scene of the July 2012 confrontation, a second assembly plant in Gurgaon, Maruti Suzuki Powertrain, Suzuki Motorcycle India and two auto parts companies.
The six area unions that called Saturday’s strike have announced a March 23 protest rally in Manesar, in defiance of a ban on all gatherings of 5 or more people that authorities have imposed in Gurgaon until March 25, precisely because they fear mass worker opposition to the frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers.
The Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU), formed by the Manesar plant workers in a rebellion against a company stooge union, also reports that plans are being made for an April 4 national day of protest.
MSWU President Ram Meher and the union’s eleven other executive members are among the 13 condemned to life imprisonment.
Advocate Rajendra Pathak, a defense attorney for some of the framed-up workers, denounced the sentences, telling a World Socialist Web Site reporter, “The judiciary is comprised of the people who have the mindset of the capitalists. The rich have all the means with them in this capitalist…