Aisin Automotive workers in India’s Haryana state face a new company-government witchhunt
By
Jai Sharma
28 July 2017
Only a few months after 13 Maruti Suzuki workers in the company’s car assembly plant at Manesar in Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Haryana state were sentenced to life imprisonment on frame-up murder charges, another Japanese company, Aisin Automotive Haryana Private Limited, has launched a victimization of its workers. The Japanese-owned auto parts maker employs close to 800 in IMT Rohtak, Haryana.
The judicial frame-up of Maruti Suzuki workers was part of company-government joint vendetta against Manesar workers in retaliation for their struggle against sweatshop conditions and for forming an independent union in opposition to the company-stooge union. Now, Aisin workers are being witch-hunted for forming a union to fight similar slave labor conditions.
Aisin, which manufactures automobile parts like door latches and inside out handles, has another plant in the south Indian state of Karnataka. The company supplies parts to major automakers like Maruti, Honda and Toyota.
More than 400 workers are facing frame-up charges following their May 31 arrest, in a brutal crackdown aimed at breaking a month-long protest by about 800 Aisin workers and their family members outside the factory. A battalion of about 700 police personnel, called in at management’s request, launched a brutal lathi (baton) charge against workers and family members who were in a dharna (sit-in-protest) outside the company gates. Even small children and the parents of workers were beaten up. 390 men and 35 women, Aisin workers and their supporters, were also arrested by the police.
Although female workers were released on bail the following day, male…