the rix mix

Sacked Indian Workers Murder CEO

The Indian head of an Italian auto parts company has been beaten to death in a suburb of Delhi, allegedly by a group of sacked workers.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, of Graziano Transmissioni India, died at the company factory in Greater Noida.

Police said more than 100 dismissed workers entered the factory vandalised machinery and attacked Mr Choudhary.

The confrontation came after a long industrial dispute. The workers denied killing Mr Choudhary.

Nearly 300 workers at Graziano Transmissioni were dismissed two months ago after they demanded pay rises and allegedly ransacked its offices, the AFP news agency reported.

There's also labor violence at other factories in India because management will not comply with worker safety demands.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), another industry lobby, said in a statement that "such incidents are bound to sully India's image amongst overseas investors at a time when India is making all-out efforts to make the business environment investment-friendly."

It's one of the costs of industrialization. From what little I understand of India, labor laws are archaic & were designed for nationalized industry but only 6 ot 7% of workers hypothetically protected by the laws are actually unionized. The laws discourage independent union organizing, which was thought to be unecessary in the old socialist planning model. Without union scrutiny, foreign corporations skirt the laws, workers who lose their jobs fall into the underground economy & face abject poverty. Employers take advantage of this fear by exploiting workers in wages & safety. The unions compete with each other for regional political influence rather than organizing for national solidarity. Sheese, it's like India wants to leap directly to the contemporary American model. Eliminate 20,000 unionized jobs, "retrain" workers into lower-paying nonunionized occupations (tech service, retail store slave), then they'll be damned grateful when 2,000 manufacturing jobs are created by foreign companies at 1/2 the wages of unionized jobs. Also downsize nonunion middle management (those trusting & loyal suburban Republicans) & use the savings to create a small number of upper tier executive positions protected by golden parachutes. Could almost make someone wanna kill a CEO.

Labels: in the news