How Ratan Tata confronted a gangster

When Ratan Tata fought back against “disruptive, violent, intimidating” gangsters.

Transcript

00:00a gangster who decided that there was considerable wealth in our union and wanted to take over

00:07control of that. Going to our officers' homes at two in the morning, ringing the bell

00:12with ski caps on and then stabbing them.

00:30Fifteen days after I became the chairman, we had a huge union eruption in Telco, which

00:43now is called Tata Motors. And there was an outside, in effect a gangster, who decided

00:49that there was considerable wealth in our union and wanted to take over control of that.

00:54He had about 200 followers. Disruptive, violent, intimidating followers. And the rest of the

01:034,000 people in that plant were uninterested. But we had made a mistake by taking the union

01:11for granted. So the union was thought to be the management's mouthpiece. So we'd done

01:19something wrong and the workers were very happy to wait and see what violence would

01:24get them. The whole issue was this guy wanted to take over the union and we would not let

01:31him do so. So we confronted him. There were two views on that. People felt we should appease

01:38him, get him out of the way by winning him over. And I was of the view that we could

01:44never do that. He arranged to beat up 400 or 500 of our employees. The police were in

01:53his pocket. You could go to the police and chances were nothing would happen. And then

02:00he emerged on a really nasty path of going to our officers' homes at two in the morning,

02:08ringing the bell with ski caps on and then stabbing them, always in the thigh so that

02:16they didn't die. But they all had to go for surgery. So he demoralized the management.

02:23And then there was increased pressure on me not to have the stand-up. Why don't you give in?

02:32And I thought that's the thin edge of the wedge and it's never going to end here and it's going

02:40to be the takeover of everything and he will run us like a gangster unit and rape the union of

02:48the funds that it has. So I continued to confront him and he called a strike and so everything

02:55stopped in the company. I put out a call to the workers to come back. They were all afraid of

03:03coming back because of what he would do to their families, etc. So I went and stayed in the plant

03:10for three days with the workers as they started to come back. And we started to restart production,

03:19people from purchase, people from accounts, everybody lent their brawn, if you might,

03:26on the shop floor too. And we started producing vehicles. And he kept saying that the plant was

03:32closed and we then took out some ads where we showed the number of people that had come back

03:39and they were trickling back anyway, but they saw that the management was firm. So finally,

03:46he lost. The police stepped in and they arrested him and arrested many of his cronies and the

03:57strike was over and everybody went back. And then, of course, everyone said,

04:02thank God you did this, etc. He, in turn, as soon as he got out of jail, put out a contract

04:10that he was going to kill me. And then again, everybody said, you know, why don't you

04:16make up with him? And so we just never did that. And that was the turning point of the whole

04:25labor relations of that company. Looking back on it, I would never have done it any other way.