From its heyday in the 60s and the 70s to its considerably weakened avatar over the years, the trade union movement in Tamil Nadu has a long and chequered history. Recent developments, both in the industrial and public spheres, have brought the worker’s welfare movement in the State back into focus. It has also raised the question of whether a revival is in the offing.
Less than a week ago, a small organisation of former IT workers announced the formation of a forum that would seek to safeguard the welfare of workers in the IT sector. Simultaneously, Chennai city also witnessed a crippling transport strike, a series of bank strikes, protests at Foxconn in Sriperumbudur and one that halted production at NVH India Auto Ltd, a major supplier for Hyundai’s plant.
They were hardly different from the strikes that brought whole sectors to a grinding halt in pre-liberalisation India — wage issues, permanent status for workers, retrenchments and factory shutdowns. It is just the scale of the protests that have changed.
“There is no question that trade unions have weakened with respect to the status they held before 1990,” admits A K Padmanabhan, president of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, one of the largest trade unions in the country.
And it looks like he’s right. According to A Soundararajan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu chapter and a national secretary of CITU, “There were strikes then that brought whole sectors to a standstill. And there were strikes that lasted for even 100 days in several companies for the issues that are being fought for now,” he points out. “And we succeeded in forcing managements to concede on several important issues.”
But the scale of mobilization has changed. Sector wide protests are few and far in between and trade unions fight a more defensive fight. The reasons are many. But the most vital, according to Padmanabhan are these: “Post-liberalisation the attitude of the government changed. The labour department was no longer willing to intervene in industrial disputes. Whatever be the case, before this shift, the labour departments, even though they were a wing of the government, were worker welfare oriented. They no longer are,” he says.
The other factors are also linked to the sweeping liberalisation reforms of 1991. The advent of MNCs brought the very existence of trade unions in these companies into question. “Companies actively started working against the very formation of trade unions in their plants,” says a union representative.
That factor, combined with the drastic reduction of permanent employees and the rapid shift to contract workers and trainees also played a big role in putting trade unions on the backfoot. “Workers were more vulnerable. They could and can be fired at the snap of a finger if they are trainees or contracted workers,” points out Soundarajan.
“This meant that unions were forced into a defensive position. We had to fight for what we had. We could no longer go on the offensive,” says Padmanabhan.
The term ‘defensive’ was not part of trade union culture in the past. The very first trade union to be formed in the country was the Madras Labour Union. The exploitative conditions at Binny Mills were the base for its formation in 1918. From that moment, trade unions had grown into powerful entities in their own right.
But relative weaknesses of unions in the last 25 years notwithstanding, they have been able to notch up a few successes. One of the most symbolic has to be the result of the Hyundai struggles in 2009. The automobile giant, one of the largest in the world and the largest exporter of cars in India, refused to recognise any union in their Chennai plant. Four consecutive strikes, one actually stopping production for 10 days, did get the company to reverse a few decisions. It reinstated nearly half of the workers it had dismissed and while still refusing to recognise an outside union, was forced to form a union on its own.
“That we managed to pressure the management of the MNC to create a union, to hike wages and to reinstate workers from the hard stand it had taken earlier is one that I count a success,” says Soundararajan.
Hyundai’s labour issues did have a negative impact vis a vis investment. One of the major reasons Hyundai is said to have relocated its highly successful i10 project from Chennai is the difficulty it faced with labour issues.
But union negotiations during the Nokia shutdown, the ongoing protests at Foxconn, the transport strike and the fast growing support for FITE have shown that unions can and do still get things done.
Does this signal a revival? Maybe. “Both we, the workers and the managements have learnt during these struggles. Managements are giving concessions more readily to prevent union formation. And while workers might be scared of losing their jobs now, they are also learning that they are vulnerable. These are social movements and they take time. But there will definitely be a revival in the coming years,” asserts Soundararajan.
Is the optimism well placed? Only time can tell.