Unrest in Smart Phone Units in Noida
With 35 production units of handset manufac-
turing, Noida is an important region of hand set
production in the country. While the annual demand
for handsets in the country is 450 million units, the
production units at Noida have a capacity to produce
200 million handsets a year.
The handset companies are making huge profits
by selling their products in the market of our country.
But the conditions of the workers in the production
units of these mobile-handsets are pathetic and
grave. In the past two years workers in these units
are resorting to agitations to realise their just
demands of wage hike and better working hours and
working conditions. But the managements of these
productions units are not heeding the just demands
of workers, forcing them to choose the path of
agitation.
Recently the workers at the Hipad Technology
went on rampage (on 30-11-2018), protesting
against the managements decision to discontinue
with the services of 200 workers by sacking them on
the pretext that demand for mobile phone fell after
Diwali.
The facility of Hipad Technology manufactures
handsets for smart phone brand Oppo and power
banks for market leaded Xiaomi. Oppo has taken a
significant part of its 3 million unit sales from their
factory for the period July-September period. Oppo’s
new brand launched on May 1, has sold a million
hand-sets till September. After earning huge profits
from these sales, now on the pretext of lack of
demand it causes the sacking of 200 workers in the
Hipad Technology units at Noida.
This is not the first time that workers went in to
protest agitation; forcing them to go on rampage due
to the ruthless and adamant anti-worker stances and
policies of the management of this unit. Oppo mobile
India knowing fully well of the fury of workers, that
goaded them in to rampage due to managements
anti-worker policies would not come to the rescue of
workers interests but makes decision in its the best
interests of earning super-profits. Neither the labour-
laws nor the governmental administration come to
protect the workers interests, but they intervene in
the name of maintaining law and order-thus protect
the interests of the errant industrial management.
In July, last year protests turned ‘violent’ at a
plant operated by smart phone maker VIVO India;
20
due to the abrupt discontinuation of 50 workers on
the pretext of improving the productivity.
In July 2016 a protest broke-out in the manufac-
turing unit of durables major LG India in Greater
Noida, demanding better wages and lower working
hours went on for months.
In March 2016 the Noida unit of mobile phone
maker Oppo was besieged by workers after reports
of a Chinese executive of the company tearing the
Indian national flag. The police interfered and
subdued the agitating workers.
In April 2018, workers and locals had ransacked
the unit of Hipad technology, smashing glass windows
and destroying the CCTV cameras demanding higher
wages and better working hours; but their demands
were not met.
The strategy of hiring of many hand-set makers
in Noida is often hiring trainees not protected by
strict labour laws and sacking them easily at any
time with impunity. With such a strategy those hand-
set makers have scaled up their operations quickly.
These companies justify their anti-worker policies
on the ruse of running the manufacturing units as a
sustainable model to meet the requirements of large
investments made by them.
On the other hand our rulers and governments
reveal that they are able to create a good
atmosphere in the country for doing-business to the
liking of foreign direct investment.
These pro big-capital policies have become a
scourge to the workers and working-class of our
country, worsening their living and working conditions
day by day pushing them in to despair with no hope
of any rescue.
The capitalists (manufactures) that created
these circumstances are again crying foul that
workers are not disciplined and resorting to violence
erasing the chances of flow of F.D.I investments in
to India and again making the victim workers of their
ruthless inhuman exploitation of their labour power
the scape goats of governmental ire and draconian
oppression.
The workers-movement of India must fight
sincerely against this aspect of abominable practices
of the big-capital against the workers coming out of
its ritual approach with regards of the protection of
interests of the workers of unorganised and informal
sector.
Class Struggle