Sonipat, Haryana: Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), the world’s largest brewer with global brands like Budweiser, Hoegaarden and Corona, has been accused of trying to break up the employee’s union in its brewery unit in Sonipat, Haryana.

Employees have pitched a tent across the road from the unit to protest against the company’s actions. Their protest has crossed 500 days now.

AB InBev boasts more than 180,000 employees globally, producing over 500 brands to be sold in 150+ countries. The Sonipat unit (formerly Haryana Breweries Ltd. and SABMiller) employs some 82 permanent workers and around 350 contractual workers.

The Haryana Breweries Limited Mazdoor Union (HBLMU), registered in 1993 when Haryana Breweries Ltd. was still a state government-owned company, is the recognised trade union of the brewery unit and has been caught in the eye of the storm.

Two opposing factions are competing for claim to the union. The protesting employees blame company management for creating this discord through illegal means. Sixty workers are in support of the protesting employees while 22 have formed a parallel union with Surat Singh as president. The AB InBev management recognises the latter as legitimate.

History

After the state government’s disinvestment from Haryana Breweries Ltd., a private entity Shaw Wallace and Co. Ltd. took over operations at the unit in 1994. Ownership kept changing hands, from Shaw Wallace to Skol Brewery Ltd. in 1996 and eventually, in 2012, to SABMiller – then the second largest brewer in the world.

The management remained largely unchanged through these transitions, but the number of permanent workers kept declining and contractual workers, who work on daily wages and can’t be part of the unit’s union, increased in numbers.

How tension started brewing

Trouble at the Sonipat brewery began after AB InBev acquired SABMiller for over 100 billion dollars in 2016.

Unsure of their future in the company after the merger, the employees attempted to revive their union that had been dormant for a few years. The HBLMU was affiliated to the RSS-linked Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) and with its help, fresh elections were held on January 16, 2016. The union then submitted their demand notice to the deputy labour commissioner (DLC), Rohtak and AB InBev on February 11, 2016.

The agitating employees present this notice, on the HBLMU letterhead, as one of the proofs of their union’s legitimacy. It lists Anil Kumar as the president, Dinesh Tiwari as the vice president and Deshraj as the general secretary of the union. The Wire has a copy of this notice with the receiving acknowledgment from the DLC office.

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The Wire spoke to over 20 of these employees who take turns to sit in the tent after their shifts end, keeping the baton passing for over 500 days. They raise slogans at the start of every shift and people from the next shift take over.

They said they were skeptical of the merger and wanted to unite so that they could negotiate collectively. Even if they were retrenched, they could get a better deal in VRS through the union.

“As soon as we revived our union, the administration got vindictive and started intimidating the members,” says 32-year-old Deshraj.

Four union members including Kumar, Tiwari and Deshraj were suspended and eventually terminated by AB InBev on charges that all of them term ‘fake’ and flimsy.

While Anil Kumar says he was unfairly terminated because of a two-day leave that the administration didn’t approve of, Deshraj claims he was thrown out on bogus charges of a fake diploma.

Personal testimonies

“I had to attend an important union meeting in Aurangabad for which I wanted a two-day leave. The leave was initially approved as I worked overtime for 16 hours on a public holiday to compensate for it but they rejected it at the last moment without offering any justification. I went to the meeting anyway and was suspended and eventually terminated because of it,” Kumar says.

He adds that he wasn’t even allowed to enter the unit when he returned; a suspension letter was sent to his home and guards at the gate stopped him from entering. “After giving my labour for six years to the company, I wasn’t even allowed to argue my case. Is this not vindictive?” Kumar says.

SABMiller had initiated an executive trainee (ET) program in 2012 whereby skilled workers who were working as associates got a chance to be promoted to become executives (supervisors) if they cleared a written exam and an internal assessment. Half of the executives were otherwise hired directly from engineering colleges.

Many associates like Deshraj who had done an ITI course after school could get a diploma from distance learning and take the exam. This was supposed to be aimed at upskilling the existing workforce.

Deshraj says he was hired as an associate on the basis of his ITI qualification in 2011. He then completed his 3-year diploma through a distance learning course in 2015. Many employees The Wire spoke to claim that after AB InBev acquired SABMiller in 2016, they said they were discontinuing the ET program.

“As soon as we formed our union and sent the demand notice, they resumed the ET program and declared the results,” Deshraj says. He claims he was selected but declined the promotion over uncertainties regarding the future of the company and also some family concerns as he would be transferred to a different unit when promoted. He lives with his wife and two children aged 1 and 7 in Sonipat.

“The company had suddenly announced it was discontinuing the ET program and then abruptly resumed it. I was unsure if they would do something similar in the future,” he adds.

He also claims that once he was promoted and something untoward happened and he was forced to leave, he wouldn’t be hired as an executive at any other brewery.

“If I’m an associate, I can work anywhere else but it would be difficult for me to join at a lower post elsewhere since they won’t recognise the ET program we had at SABMiller. AB InBev had just taken over and I didn’t want to take the risk so I declined,” he says.

AB InBev then issued a show cause notice to him saying he didn’t want to join the ET program because his diploma was ‘fraud’. He claims he replied to the notice with his concerns and a letter from his institute confirming the validity of his diploma but was terminated after a “motivated” enquiry.

The justification given was that his diploma wasn’t approved by the UGC or AICTE. “They had never mentioned the diploma had to be approved from UGC or AICTE in the form,” he says.

He further claims that seven of the current executives working at AB InBev have the same diploma as him. “Even if the diploma was invalid, I had declined the promotion anyway and was still an associate, for which I was hired on the basis of my ITI qualification which wasn’t disputed by the management,” he says. Citing these instances, he calls his termination a “witch hunt” against union members.

Dinesh Tiwari, who had worked for six years at the unit, was also terminated on similar grounds. “Why were we hired and allowed to work for so many years if our degrees were invalid? Why did the enquiry start just after we formed our union?” asks Deshraj. Some employees claim Tiwari was offered a choice to dissociate from the union and keep his job.

In addition to these actions, protesting employees allege constant harassment and intimidation by the management to disassociate from the union. “How dare you form a union? I will personally bundle all 11 of you in a bus and drop you home,” they allege Alok Sharma, former HR head for the zone, told them. The union had 11 people in its committee.

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The employees also went on a 21-day strike starting July 13, 2016 against the suspension and intimidation of union members. An agreement was reached with the DLC’s intervention and work resumed. However, the peace was transitory and employees claim the management went back to its old intimidation tactics.

On April 28 last year, the protestors claim they were beaten up by goons from the nearby Murthal village. They suspect the management was involved as employees siding with the management accompanied these goons and ordered them to move out and stop the protest. The Wire has a copy of a video clip showing employees in uniform intimidating the protesters in their tent.

The employees filed a police complaint but a counter FIR was filed and nine of them had to spend two days in prison before they were bailed out. One of the protesters was seriously injured and had to get stitches near his left eye.

Deshraj now works at an inverter battery shop and Kumar farms on his small piece of land to sustain their families.

The curious case of two union presidents

The protesting employees allege that Karan Singh Rana, legal advisor of the HBLMU, went behind their back and sided with the management. “Rana went to the management and conducted a fresh election in the presence of just 22 permanent employees without even informing the rest of us,” says Deshraj.

A new committee was formed in December 2017 which was recognized by the administration and the previous committee members have been protesting against it ever since.

Karan Singh Rana is former president of the Haryana unit of the BMS. According to a BMS representative, he hasn’t officially been part of the BMS since before 2016.

The representative, who asked not to be identified, also told The Wire that workers had accused Rana of unethical practices. He also said that Surat Singh, who AB InBev recognises as the president of the BMS-affiliate HBLMU, was recently let go from the BMS. Singh isn’t an employee of AB InBev.

As things stand, AB InBev refuses to recognise the faction with the majority of permanent workers (60) and negotiates with a BMS-affiliated union president whom the BMS itself has expelled.

In response to Anil Kumar’s letter to Devender Singh Yadav of AB InBev seeking time to meet and discuss concerns of the employees, Yadav wrote back saying the labour court had recorded the statement of Surat Singh as the president of the same union and that Kumar had “absolutely no right or authority to address any communication to him in the capacity of president of the same union. There cannot be two different persons as president of one and same union.”

The protesting employees have now gone to the high court in Chandigarh to challenge the legitimacy of the new union; the case is to be heard in September.

“The BMS supports Anil Kumar and Deshraj and we will ensure action is taken in their favour,” a BMS representative told The Wire. Deshraj, who was disappointed with the BMS earlier, now blames Rana and has no complaints against the parent union.

Global solidarity and response from AB InBev

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), an international federation of trade unions representing workers in processing and manufacture of food and beverages, has extended support to the protesting workers.

The IUF has formally filed a complaint against AB InBev under the OECD guidelines with the Belgian National Contact Point and is also running a signature campaign in support of these workers.

“It’s intolerable that a global corporation with prestigious brands like Budweiser should deny workers at their Sonipat plant in India their fundamental human right to freely join a union and exercise their collective bargaining rights. This is a global company that has now put its global reputation at risk by treating Sonipat plant workers in India as second class citizens,” says Hidayat Greenfield, regional secretary of IUF Asia Pacific.

The Wire reached out to AB InBev with specific questions regarding allegations of management trying to break up the union at the Sonipat unit, complaints of violent intimidation, the 500 days of protest and details of why Anil Kumar and Deshraj were terminated. The response from their spokesperson, which barely addresses the specific queries, is reproduced below in full:

“Respect for human rights is a non-negotiable commitment for our business and we continually enhance our approach throughout our business operations and supply chain. Our people are our greatest priority and we take any concerns related to labor relations extremely seriously. As part of this commitment, we have ongoing dialogue with the independently elected union leadership that represent our workers to engage on labor related matters.”

The spelling of the word labour suggests the statement was drafted in the US and not India.