Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.- Rene Girard , Violent Origins
New breed of activists demand labour rights across industrial units | |||||
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IFB Automotive, at Binola in Haryana, is a leading technology provider for safety- and comfort-related products in the automotive sector. Its client list includes the biggies such as Honda, Ford, Toyota and Hyundai. "Every time you push back your front seat in the car, remember that our hard work has gone into making it possible. We worked to make life comfortable for others, often working overtime without extra wages. Now, over 250 workers have been expelled without an adequate explanation," says Manoj Kumar, 25. He is not your textbook trade union leader. A political science graduate, he heads IFB Mill Workers' Union which is spearheading the protest against the company's decision to terminate the workers. "A day after 250 workers were packed off by the management on June 11, we decided to form a union. I had never been affiliated with any political party. I thought I should put my education to good use to lead these workers," he says. Kumar has already prepared an overtime bill of Rs 62 lakh for the workers and submitted it to the district labour commissioner for inquiry.
"A whole new world opened to me in college," says Rajwinder, recalling the time when he first read freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's jail diary. The young man devoured the extensive literature on labour movements, from the Howrah railwaymen's agitation for shorter work hours in 1862 to more contemporary movements in the 1980s led by Datta Samant. In 2005, Rajwinder and Lakhwinder, a diploma-holder in casting and moulding plastics from Chandigarh's Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, headed for Ludhiana. They launched the independent Karkhana Mazdoor Union (KMU) in June 2008, whose membership grew rapidly as workers got increasingly disillusioned with older party-affiliated labour unions. The subsequent success of a textile workers' strike in September 2010 established the KMU's dominance across Ludhiana. It paved the way for a separate TMU with plans to unionise Ludhiana's cycle industry, automobile ancillary units and hosiery workers. Punjab continues to have one of the lowest rates of minimum wages in the country, which, TMU claims, has not been comprehensively reviewed since 1970. Private factory owners are reluctant to pay even this low wage. "Textile workers are terribly exploited. A single worker runs twice the number of machines he did a decade ago, yet takes home less money than he did then if one adjusts for inflation. Working conditions are extremely unhygienic," says Rajwinder, recounting an instance in 2008 when a local tyre-manufacturing unit's management simply disowned a worker who was killed in a shop floor accident. "These are very poor people who live in unimaginable squalor. Workers have no choice but to fight. Things can't get any worse for them," he says. Rakhi Sehgal, 41, with short hair and a carefree grin on her face, lifts her fist as she says, "I love a good fight." Her union, the National Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), has grown from a membership of just 500 workers when it was founded in 2006 to nearly 11 lakh now. While traditional trade unions were still formulating their strategy, NTUI forayed into unorganised labour, private factories and organising women workers. Sehgal, a post-graduate in international relations from American University in Washington, first came to Gurgaon in 2003 to conduct field study for her doctoral dissertation. "I was taken aback by the problems workers faced and decided to stay back and organise them," she says. "Unlike traditional unions, we listened to workers and made the organisation democratic. The central leadership isn't allowed to turn down decisions taken at the grassroots," she adds. NTUI engages with employers and the state on issues of collective bargaining and regulation of employment in workplaces. Its interventions span from DHL emplo-yees across the country to health workers in Punjab.
Leaders are emerging from the factory floor. Sharavana Kumar, 24, has all workers at mobile handset manufacturer Nokia's Tamil Nadu plant in Chennai on speed dial. He, along with P. Suresh, also 24, set up the Nokia India Tozhilazhi Sangham in 2010. Finnwatch, the watchdog for Finnish companies operating in developing nations, reports in September 2010 that Nokia's employees in Chennai are being paid low salaries "even in the Indian context". "Initially, workers were scared to unionise. Then we talked to them about their rights and asked them to come under the banner of an independent union," says Kumar. Nokia's Chennai workers went on strike in July 2010 and secured a pay revision. In the small fishermen's hamlet of Baguram Jalpai next to Haripur in West Bengal lives Debasis Shyamal, 32, a leader of the National Fishworkers' Forum (NFF) that represents around 7 million fishermen. In 2004, he was inducted into the NFF executive committee at 24. Shyamal is a graduate but his seven uncles are all fishermen. "My life changed after I met Harekrishna Debnath, the late NFF chairperson, and Father Thomas Kocherry, the founder of Kerala Swatantra Matsyathozhilali Federation," says Shyamal. He got involved in the fishermen's movement himself. Shyamal played an instrumental role in the Machimar Adhikar Rashtriya Abhiyan, a campaign of fishing folk that started in Jhakhau, Kutch, on May 1, 2008 and finished in Kolkata on June 27, 2008, after covering major fishing villages along the entire seaboard. The campaign demands included scrapping of the proposed Coastal Management Zone (CMZ) notification of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and recognition of the rights of fishermen. The Government modified the CMZ Act after the movement.
New unions run the risk of not putting democratic processes in place and getting hijacked by a leader who treats it like a fief. "The task is to imbue the spirit of democracy among the workers. In north India, workers often follow a leader without giving serious thought about the organisation and its mission," says Sindhu. Many workers in the bpo sector approach unions only if they face a crisis. "We often end up playing agony aunts. The first salary of many workers is often more than the last drawn by their parents. It is very difficult to build a credible and committed leadership because we face the same crisis the industry faces: heavy attrition," says Kartik Shekhar of unites, a bpo industry union. - With Asit Jolly, Lakshmi Subramanian, Partha Dasgupta and Shravya Jain Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/special-report/1/160578.html |
