Mumbai which had managed their membership collections and finances on sound business footing. He wanted to continue the agitation in spite of our cuts and he also moved the court to declare our practice of proportionate deduction as illegal. We pleaded at court that we will pay the workers’ deducted amounts when they make good the lost Production. In any event we were willing to deposit the deducted money in Court but would not pay workers who have not worked and therefore not earned that money. Even for a court this was a novel approach. The court accepted it in all fairness and RJ did not succeed in getting a decision in his favour. This was a great setback to RJ as his reputation was such that he did not lose any case at court. Go-slow continued to fester, but once workers realised their mistake the case was lost in the Court.
Most of Unichem workers, as soon as the union lost the case in
the court their support for the go-slow ended. It was not for any of their
. demands. At that time under the leadership of young dynamic workers
they separated from their earlier union and joined a new union under
the leadership of Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, a labour wing of Shiv Sena. En
masse the workers left the recognised union, Mumbai Mazdoor Sabha and
they joined Bharatiya Kamgar Sena. Mumbai Mazdoor Sabha, however,
continued as the legally representative (recognised) union but the workers’ support evaporated. It had ceased to be de facto representative union.
In all this matter my personal position was that all workers were like me employees of the Company. Even when I was a manager I was their equal as an Employee. Even when all brothers in the family are equal the responsibility of the elder brother is more. In Unichem family I was in the role of that elder brother or Karta. I knew how much an elder brother goes out for the family by my personal experience. Shri RJ Mehta or his union was representing my younger brothers as their representative and leader, But all the same he was a representative. My responsibility was tied to my younger brothers. Even in the period of tension I had kept my family communication intact. I never believed in communication only through legal notices on the Notice Board or writing to the workers what was vetted by the lawyers. I did not buy that method. In any industrial establishment the communication between the management and the
workers has to be continuous.
Since I am a product of the land of Konkan I consider equality as a greatest values in social arena. Since I occupied a senior position in the official hierarchy in the company I did not become a senior human being as an individual. That my responsibilities, my education, my experience, were superior to my fellow employees was as clear as a daylight to me, but as a human being I was not superior to them. My superiority was in my work and my post, but not as a human being. I always made it a point
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