Where Lean May Shake: Challenges to Casualisation in the Indian Auto Industry

Abstract

By analysing the industrial conflict that has affected the Indian Maruti Suzuki since 2011/2012, the article reflects on the meaning of the lean manufacturing paradigm today. It explores what continues to make it dominant, and the ultimate frontiers it has reached. It argues that its global significance could not have been established without the exploitation of local labour regimes, and without stretching their competitive advantage to the detriment of workers. In particular, the desirable condition now sought at global level is the possibility of relying on regimes based on high levels of casualisation, allowing the progressive "substitution" of permanent workers. However, as the Maruti case also reveals, working-class composition and the sustainability of the local labour process can generate mechanisms and unexpected alliances that could potentially destabilise the system. Indeed, the case shows how corporate strategies intended to fragment and depoliticise labour, inbuilt into the paradigm, were directly challenged and encountered resistance. Ultimately, though, the case also shows how, without strong legal and political support, the potential of a labour movement can be suffocated by institutionalised violence. In this sense, lean reacts, and the despotic imposition of consent becomes visible as never before.

Truths and unfreedoms of regimes of insecurity and the resistance of the commons

“…Workers realize that commoning is an important form of resistance and can construct alternative social relations premised on solidarity that counteracts the structural violence of capital (Azzellini, 2018; Caffentzis, 2010; CRAC, 2014; Hardt and Negri, 2009). One of the important expressions of commoning and shared articulations of grief is the sustenance of protest cultures against factory closures, job losses and the increasing contractualisation of work (Standing, 2008; Monaco, 2017). Other expressions of solidarity included migrant workers from the same region creating shared spaces of living and eating and providing support to each other to tide over difficult times.…”

“…Workers experience a heightened sense of re-commodification that exacerbates prevailing inequalities (Standing, 2008). MNEs derive competitive advantage by colluding with states to inflict institutionalised violence on workers (Monaco, 2017). The substitution of permanent workers with casual workers is possible only when states in emerging economies support MNEs in imposing despotic forms of consent (Monaco, 2017).…”

The informalization of capital and interlocking in labour contracting networks

“…Other labour-intensive sectors provide a similar picture (e.g., Ruthven, 2010, on metalware). Informalization is also hitting capital-intensive sectors, like the automotive industry (D’Costa, 2011; Monaco, 2015), and the service economy (e.g., Mitter et al ., 2004, on call centres).…”