Wednesday, May 22nd 07:18 AM IST
 

Unrest at Maruti Suzuki plant shows labour unions are irrelevant

Akshaya Mishra

On the face of it, the idea of labour unions is a good one. It provides workers with bargaining strength vis-a-vis exploitative managements. But India’s experience with such unions has been a bad one. Highly politicised and to a big extent irresponsible, they have hurt the workers more than they have served them. The collapse of the textile industry in Mumbai and the consequent misery of the workforce were partly due to aggressive unionism. The problem lies with the conflict approach generally adopted by the bodies for resolution of contentious issues. Only recently, we noticed how Indian Airlines pilots held the country and the aviation sector to ransom. In the case of the Maruti factory at Manesar too the case is somewhat similar. The union has been leveraging its local social support base to browbeat the management. It needs to be disbandedread less read more

Durga Raghunath

While Employees’ Unions in some cases like Maruti Suzuki, tend to have leadership that is divorced from workers’ concerns, that workers in India need representation is without any doubt. Barring a few players in the private sector, the factory or industrial environment in India is simply not progressive enough to treat workers fairly. A lack of equal benefits, bonds and unjust working conditions are still very much a reality in modern India.read less read more