Left Will Make a Difference in India
Posted : August 17, 2005 at 9:20 pm [IST]
What I saw the other day on TV just shocked me. I saw first the workers assaulting brutally a senior police officer, then police beating the agitating workers as the Britishers did with agitating crowd in pre-independence days, and more exciting was the scene of a woman attacking a policeman with a heavy stick. It all reminded me of a similar assault by workers in 1973 at HM (Hindustan Motors). Only police part was missing. I got assaulted too. Are the leftist unions getting inspired with its strength in UPA? Recent trend of labour unrest rising across the country is getting serious. And all these are happening in manufacturing sector-HMSI, Speedomax, Autofit, Toyota kirloskar Motors, Ramsons Cables, Mico- that is trying to compete globally and also with the Chinese manufacturing too.
I was amused when one of my old colleagues made a statement- “You know, the Chinese are paying the leftists to create problems in Indian manufacturing sector. They are afraid, India may supercede them with better quality products.” However, any perception of militant trade unionism in India will harm India badly. India can then forget FDIs. Japanese would have come to India because of their problems with Chinese, but they will not with the slightest problem from the labour side.
Leftists may expand their empire, but India will be left behind in the race for a respectful position in global economy. And in turn, India will have to live with a huge population in poverty. Unfortunately, the leftists in India are still living in the old way of forcing equity. They don’t want to take some good lessons from the Chinese story of prosperity that has amazed the whole of the world. They are bent on opposing any reform. They wish to survive on age old but still very attractive and easily digestible slogans of sharing all that big corporate earns as their right. And in turn the huge mass of workforce still flock around them. And become their prey. Can any sane person appreciate a recent statement of Mrs. Binda Karat, the Politburo member in CPM with her husband, now the chairman? “Look at the huge first quarter profit that large companies have reported. These are never passed on to workers.” Is it a sensible logic? How much damage can it do to the industrial relations of the enterprises?
This is what CPM unions had been doing since our days in West Bengal. They create a breach of trust between the management and employees. It not only spoils the working environment, but also affects the quality and other productivity drives or disrupts the processes of the total quality management practices. It creates doubts in the minds of the workforce and thus enmity with workforce, a dilemma for supervisory management and the managers, and difficulty for the executives to think big on global scale. How can you blame the workers when their leaders live on this trick of alluring them with ‘pay hikes, and considerable amount of perks to go for strikes or other means of protesting or demonstrating and that also without any link with productivity?
Gurupad Dasgupta is one such union leader and a CPI member in parliament too. As I understand, he must be the mentor of many unions in companies including Hindustan Motors Workers Union. Will he agree to an independent investigation on the role of unions in spoiling the working culture in West Bengal that finally led to closures of so many factories and finished the best manufacturing state? The new management trend in India of right sizing might have done less loss of jobs in the process. But the leftists unions did everything to close the cash rich companies and caused the loss of employments to millions and in turn brought poverty to those families. All the jute mills and tea gardens in West Bengal are examples.
And who has been benefited in the process? Even a petty union leader stops working and pretends doing full time union work at the cost to the companies. I wish someone did an investigative study about the rich awards that these union leaders get in cash and kinds, and the wealth they have created. At HM I have seen myself the facilities offered to the union activists, and many a times I used to envy them. With all my education and hard work I was not getting the remuneration that these union leaders used to command though through under-the-table method.
Union all over the world has become ineffective. In US and Western countries, it has finished the manufacturing sector. The companies there failed to bear the burden of the agreed remunerations and perks of the workforce, and shifted first to Mexico and now to China. Most of the Japanese, European, South Korean transplants in US don’t have unions in their plants. In India too, the MNCs will expect to follow the same route or model. But with leftists playing major roles in UPA government, perhaps it may not be possible for long. It will be for the political parties to find a way to get out of the workers’ union activities respectfully in the interest of the nation.
Is there a way to insulate the industries from trade unionism? Perhaps, the answer can be only in negative. However, the leftist union leaders must understand the reality better and appreciate the steps of modern management practices and the market pressure that take care of the grievances of the employees through a robust management system. Today no good management can keep on exploiting workforce, if it wishes to be global in real sense. HR practices have gone far ahead in policy and practices too. On the same line, the trade unionists have not changed at all. The right of strike must be reviewed. Is there no other alternative method? Why can’t the right grievance handling system at all levels through effective regulators take care of their problems?
Indian trade unions must contribute in nation building. They must change their way on their own. If they don’t change, the younger educated generation will have to throw them out? For Mrs Binda, I have a suggestion. CPM has two states under its rule. Let them innovate a business model where all workmen can share the profits of the corporate. I am sure the other will make that model a benchmark.
- Indra
Category: Industry/Management |
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