May Day lessons: Refocus on workers in gig economy
Exactly 100 years after Madras hosted India’s first May Day celebration on May 1, 1923, supporting the Chicago protest that demanded an eight-hour workday, the Tamil Nadu chief minister has quietly withdrawn a controversial bill that allowed industries to fix flexible working hours for workers. The move may strictly be fortuitous, but the journey of a century tells us a story of struggle and resilience by workers. In the era of technological progress and the gig economy, the once-powerful labour unions have slowly faded into oblivion or resigned themselves to the fate of a ‘welfare’ society. With the government busy selling PSUs and bidding goodbye to running enterprises and the private sector shying away from setting up new industries, the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has steadily declined, leaving the migrant workforce in the lurch.
In the meantime, the service sector has turned out to be a goldmine for jobs, leading to a boom in the country’s forex revenues. As private capital expenditure dwindled, state governments, searching for options to create job opportunities, rolled out the red carpet for investments. It is evident that industrialists, being chased by state governments, are wielding more demanding power. Single-window clearance, free electricity, a long lease of land, lenient environmental regulations, and flexible labour laws are some of the carrots that governments have offered from time to time to attract them.
One such announcement by Tamil Nadu—the Factories (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Bill, 2023— however met with stiff resistance last month, with political parties, including DMK’s alliance partners, rejecting it outright. On April 24, the Bill was kept in abeyance, and, on May 1, the CM announced its withdrawal during the May Day celebrations in Chennai, saying that it was meant only for a few industries. Tamil Nadu, which recently faced a massive churn of migrant workers owing to rumours of attacks, had to work hard to instil confidence in them and ensure they stayed back. Ever since the pandemic, the textile town of Tirupur has seen massive labour churn. The increasing uncertainty over jobs, the year-on-year salary hike that barely offsets high inflation, waning bargaining power, and the absence of new manufacturing hubs are all worrying signals for the labour class. The Central government needs to prioritise private capital and, together with the state governments, should look to expand social benefits for the workers.