Dear Mr. Arun:
I read your piece "Bring on the unions" in today's edition of The Economic Times with great interest and my compliments on your articulate thoughts.
Having promoted the Indian auto component industry for over 15 years and understanding the industry, its management and its nuances, I was not surprised at the agitation of the workers in the automotive belt of Gurgaon in which a number of companies are Japanese-owned or partnered.
A large part of the problem is economic and also a "passing-the-buck" management style of the top management, including the Japanese.
Gurgaon is becoming exceptionally expensive. Among others, I see two reasons. There has been a great influx of moneyed/affluent people from Delhi into Gurgaon coupled with the huge earnings gained by some members of the agricultural community after they have sold big tracts of their land for commercial use. Their purchasing power and willingness to pay any amount for whatever has contributed to the rising prices of goods and services in Gurgaon. Here the common man suffers as he cannot afford to to do the same.
This apart, other macro-economic and weather-related factors such as poor monsoon, have even led to a huge rise in the price of vegetables, for instance, which were abundantly and cheaply available in the weekly vegetable mandis (markets) that come up in certain residential areas of Gurgaon.
Management, which includes the HR departments of companies, need to function in a more transparent and less feudalistic manner with co-workers, especially the contract workers. To possess jobs and money have become a matter of life-and-death, due to intense economic pressures, and have led workers to resort to a more militant-like behaviour in addressing their grievances.
Owners/top management are continuing to follow a layered mechanism between themselves and till the level of someone who guards the gate. They need to be in direct touch with their fellow workers rather than totally leave that to the layers of managers between them and the workers.
The Japanese managers also need to realise that they cannot pass-the-buck of dealing with Indian workers to their Indian managers. They will have to transplant greater "agency" like they do in Japan, and to borrow the word from your article, upon themselves in their work place in India along with best practices like TQM and TPM which have been transplanted. One of the simple and most effective ways in which a Frenchman and CEO of Renault, Carlos Ghosn, won the hearts of his highly nationalistic co-workers at Nissan Japan, was by going to the shopfloor and shaking hands with people there.
The sooner people realise that management is all about humanity, compassion, respect and fair dealing, no matter what the status of the person, the sooner will we see violent worker agitation disappear from our enterprises and, more importantly, a rise in levels of quality and productivity to take our nation forward.
Regards
Taarun Dalaya
