Strike at Alfa Laval, Pune, India

Contract workers at this Swedish-owned company have been on strike since October 1st. The company announced a year ago that they want to shift production to another plant in 2015, and got rid of 400 contract workers. At this point the remaining contract workers formed a union.

Harassment by the management, big wage differentials between them and the permanent workers, work pressure and job insecurity all fed into reasons for the strike. They want permanent status.

In many ways, this strike is typical of many that happen in india, where the management quickly hires replacements so as to limit the impact on production, and the threat and fear of police repression produce an over-reliance by some workers on the union, which often steers the strike into legalistic and symbolic actions that reach a dead-end and keep the workers isolated from other workers e.g. others that work in the area with similar conditions and grievances.