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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anna and the labour strike at Maruti by TK Arun

Anna and the labour strike at Maruti by TK Arun

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published Published on Sep 8, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 8, 2011

You have the right to: Organize a union to negotiate with your employer concerning your wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. Form, join or assist a union.

Bargain collectively through representatives of employees' own choosing for a contract with your employer setting your wages, benefits, hours, and other working conditions. Discuss your terms and conditions of employment or union organizing with your co-workers or a union.

Take action with one or more co-workers to improve your working conditions by, among other means, raising work-related complaints directly with your employer or with a government agency, and seeking help from a union. Strike and picket, depending on the purpose or means of the strike or the picketing.

Choose not to do any of these, including joining or remaining a member of a union." Does this strike you as something straight out of the Soviet Union, or at least from pre-Mamata West Bengal? After all, middle class India's conventional wisdom holds unions to be troublemakers who kill productivity and economic growth.

So, it would be natural to think that the notice cited above belongs to a contrived workers' paradise. In reality, this is a notice the US government wants employers to prominently display at the workplace, except in some industries.

How come the most capitalist of capitalist countries shows such tolerance, if not actual encouragement, of unions? This is because unions straddle, besides the economic sphere, the political one as agents of democracy. They articulate, at the workplace, the freedom of association, enshrined in the First Amendment and the bill of rights.

This is a link that eludes the great Indian middle class, incandescent, these days, with rightful rage against rotten politics and corrupt politicians. The Indian middle class is happy to take to the streets with the national flag, scented candles and Anna's praise. But what do they have to say, on the labour unrest at Maruti or the Gurgaon-Manesar belt in general? Precious little, when it is not abuse.

Such schizophrenia on democracy is not entirely unnatural, given the manner in which India got this form of governance. Western societies that established the paradigm of democracy as the post-colonial ideal for countries like India did so after hard internal struggles.

The revolutions of 19th century Europe had universal adult franchise as their foremost demand. Democracy was a hard-won right, inspired by thinkers, backed by the rising class of capitalists, who wanted freedom from feudal constraints, and fought for, on the ground, by the working people, organised into unions and otherwise.

In India, the freedom struggle schooled a large number of people, steeped in a tradition of the worst kind of social hierarchy and inequality, in democracy. These were yet a tiny fraction of the Indian population. The Constitution of independent India adopted democracy as the country's form of government, thrusting it on a premodern society, which is still in the process of evolving to realise constitutional norms.

Unions are a vital instrumentality of modernity and democracy. General Douglas MacArthur, who led the US occupation of Japan after the end of World War II, actively encouraged unionisation of the workforce, so as to guard against Japan's return to militarism.

By 1947, 48% of the non-agricultural workforce had been unionised, thanks to his strenuous efforts. Coupled with extensive land reforms, this piece of social engineering helped relaunch Japan as a miracle economy. A military leader's enlightenment eludes the Indian elite, unfortunately.

For an enterprise, its workers are a cost that must be held down. However, for the rest of the economy, those workers are its market. If all enterprises succeed in keeping their own wages as low as possible, the result would be to repress the domestic market for industry's produce.

Only if workers have sufficient purchasing power, and sufficient leisure to read, listen to music, watch movies and eat out, can a diversified economy thrive. What is rational for individual enterprises is irrational at the level of the larger economy. Unions are the only agency that can pierce the insularity of individual enterprises to let in the light of macro-level sense.

Unions, on their part, must appreciate their constructive role in society. Industrial action that sabotages an enterprise's viability or damages its credibility with customers is just not acceptable. It is a matter of shame that workers have to go on prolonged strike to gain essential recognition as workers or unions.

Maruti and other employers need to see themselves and their workers as integral players in India's ongoing modernisation. If industry wants less corruption and more accountable governance, they must accept unions as agents of the needed democratic deepening.


The Economic Times, 8 September, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/t-k-arun/anna-and-the-labour-strike-at-maruti/articleshow/9904930.cms


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