Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Give Us Our Fucking Jobs Back!

Former Lehman Brothers' CEO Richard Fuld, who tried to dodge blame for his company's failure during his Capitol Hill testimony, ought to be glad that his employees didn't follow the lead of employees of an Italian car parts manufacturer in India. It was there last week that the corporate world found itself in a state of shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, died of severe head wounds after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, according to press reports. The incident, in Greater Noida, followed a long-running dispute between the factory’s management and workers demanding better pay and permanent contracts.

It all started when Choudhary (who is survived by a wife and son) called a meeting with more than a hundred former employees who had been dismissed after an earlier outbreak of violence at the plant. He wanted to discuss a possible reinstatement deal. The handful of employees who were invited into the building for negotiations apparently had a different plan.

The approximately 150 people who were left waiting outside suddenly heard someone from inside shout for help. They rushed in and the two sides clashed. The company staff were heavily outnumbered, with the remaining executives claiming that they were lucky to escape with their lives. “I locked my door from inside and prayed they would not break in. See, my hands are trembling even three hours later,” one Italian consultant said.

More than 60 people were arrested and more than 20 were admitted to the local hospital following the incident. A spokesman for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said: “Such a heinous act is bound to sully India’s image among overseas investors.”

The murder has stoked fears that outbreaks of mob rule risk jeopardizing the sub-continent’s economic rise. Thousands of violent protesters recently forced Tata, the Indian conglomerate that owns Land Rover and Jaguar, to halt work on a plant being built to produce the world’s cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano. The move could result in over $400 million in investment costs being written off.

Tata stopped work three weeks ago, saying that it could not guarantee its workers’ safety at the factory in the state of West Bengal. The billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani said that the Nano crisis showed how protesters were creating “a fear psychosis to slow down certain projects of national importance”.

No comments: