An Oscar for Oscar Fernandes

While inaugurating the Third India-EU Seminar on "Employment Relations and Resolution of Conflicts" yesterday, the Union Labor Minister, Oscar Fernandes, conveyed his condolences to the family of Lalit Kumar Chowdhary, CEO of Cerlikon-Graziano Transmissions India Pvt. Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of an Italian company in the auto-ancillary business in Greater Noida.

Mr. Chowdhary was killed in his office on Monday by an irate mob of over 150 laid off workers. Many other senior officers were also brutally attacked and are in the ICU, fighting for their lives. Mr. Fernandes said it should serve as a warning for managements. He appealed to managements that workers should be handled with compassion. He talked about the simmering discontent among workers and remarked that the corporate sector was seen to be lacking in compassion. He said that the number of organized workers had been decreasing. It has come down from 7% to 6%. He said he would raise the matter of hire and fire in the next labor congress. He also stressed that the workforce was unable to express its simmering discontent over the management policies, leading to strained ties between them and the management.

It is sad that a union minister expressed such feelings at a public function. Even to harbor such a sentiment would be against the norms of civil behavior. Since when has ‘murder’ become legal in India? Even more surprising is the fact that Sonia Gandhi, who must pride herself as the upholder of culture and civilized conduct, decided to keep quite in this matter. Surely the fact that factory workers constitute a numerically larger constituency than CEOs must have weighed down her catholic revulsion to such utterances by a Congress party member.

Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh can be expected to take it up strongly as he has shown by his conduct thus far that he cares little for petty electoral machinations. I am sure when it is brought to his attention he would suitably admonish his minister. Decent public conduct demands that he asks the minister to make amends. One can expect a press release from Oscar Fernandes’ office saying he was quoted out of context, the usual trick adopted by all public figures when they wish to deflect criticism for their controversial utterances.

Mr. Fernandes, the talk about the number of organized workers coming down is utter humbug. It appears that you are unaware that the service sector in India has grown from around 50% of a much smaller GDP twenty years ago to nearly 65% of a much larger GDP today. As any child knows the service sector is largely unorganized in India and thus any employment data would not show those numbers. Typically organized employment data is about the ‘brick and mortar’ manufacturing sector, which is going down as a percentage of GDP and where computerization has yielded tremendous productivity enhancements over last 15 – 20 years.

And when you talk of ‘Compassionate Corporates’ what stops you from enacting stringent laws of disengagement and implementing them in totality? In any case a country which never hesitates to pat its back for its IT revolution can not afford to talk ill of a small private enterprise outsourcing to cut costs to remain viable. India’s IT earnings Mr. Fernandes, are built on jobs outsourced from the west. When the American people protest about job losses in the US we are quick to rise in defense of the IT sector citing lower cost to the consumer but then talk about ‘simmering discontent’ when the troubles are closer home.

Mr. Oscar Fernandes, you should consider the context and totality of your utterances. Don’t forget that Mr. L K Chowdhary has a family who are grieving. You owe it to them to seek forgiveness for such blatantly inhuman and ill-considered speech.

Now I know what “Speech is Silver, Silence is Golden” means.

image courtest www.hindu.com