[Reader-list] Strike

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Strikes, for a very long time in India now, are as much a tool used  
by managements as by workers. Knowingly, or unknowingly, pliant  
unions are often compelled to go on strike by management policies,  
and then the management uses the strike as an excuse to either  
declare a lock out, or to retrench more workers, or to win a key  
issue to do with the intensification of the labour process. That this  
has not been happening so frequently in recent days is an indication  
of the relative strength that Capital enjoys in India today, vis-a- 
vis Labour. Management does not need strikes to happen as often as  
earlier. However, those of us who do remember the intensity of the  
Hero Honda strike some years ago, will remember that Labour  
disaffection has not gone away, it has merely been beaten into  
submission, momentarily.

I would wager that the number of strikes has gone down, partly  
because of labour insecurity, as you point out, but also because the  
nature of the industrial workforce has changed. A large majority of  
the workforce in the industrial sector is now 'contract' or 'casual',  
and these are not only unskilled workers. This pool of workers moves  
from factory to factory, from enterprise to enterprise, even within  
regions. Traditional unions are never able to get leverage with this  
large body of contract workers. They end up trying to protect the  
positions of the shrinking space of 'permanent' workers, who are  
increasingly made into pliant tools of the management, because of the  
ever present threat of job insecurity.

Anyone with any experience of industrial areas will be able to tell  
you, how most (though certainly not all) unions, including the  
'politicized' ones, are really thugs purchased by the management to  
keep the peace, and especially to enforce the kind of threat that  
keeps all workers, organized and unorganized, in line.

And, I am not sure that the history of the Japanese Labour movement  
could be characterized as having a lack of militancy. While it is  
true that the severity of the recession has hit Japanese labour hard,  
and unemployment is at a record high, Japanese labour data, typically  
does not include 'wildcat' strikes and informal work stoppages, the  
numbers of which, by all reports are rising. Post war Japan had a  
huge surge of Labour Militancy, which was sought to be contained  
through large unions that would do the bidding of the state through a  
'corporatist' agenda, but labour militancy in Japan is much higher  
than is generally thought to be the case, though it is not as high,  
or as intense as it is in South Korea, or Taiwan.

Incidentally, since there is a discussion on labour issues in India  
on this thread ( a refreshing change from the endless excoriations by  
the bearers of injured Hindu honour ) people might find it  
interesting to look at the latest issue of 'Gurgaon Workers News: A  
Report from the Special Exploitation Zone' which I paste below. I  
have always found the contents of this newsletter very interesting to  
read.

regards

Shuddha
------------------
Gurgaon Workers News - Newsletter 17 (May 2009)

full version: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com

Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of  
capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the  
gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and  
shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the  
garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade,  
behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial  
areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars  
and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam  
on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young  
middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on  
night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class  
people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the  
UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the  
agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry  
brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat-race will  
not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, Asia's biggest Special  
Economic Zone is in the making. The following newsletter documents  
some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If  
you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you  
want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so  
via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news at yahoo.co.uk

In the May 2009 issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective

*** Auto-biographic story of a 49 years old driver about his  
experience as a working-class Sikh in Delhi since the 1970s, his  
experiences as a proletarian militant in a religious organisation,  
the shock of the anti-Sikh riots, his disillusionments and  
revelations...
The story was told to FMS and published in issue 247, January 2009.  
In FMS longer stories about the (daily) life of workers are published  
under the heading "Aap-Ham kya-kya karte hain", asking "So what are  
you-we doing". The series emphasises the need to talk about ourselves  
regaining a sense of importance of our experiences and make them  
heard  - against the big noise of the public life of stars, leaders,  
cooperate identities...

*** Math and Wrath of Misery - The workers' reports tell us about  
average daily wages for workers in modern industries of about 100 Rs.  
This short note puts this wage in a context of daily expenditures.  
Followed by a short impression of distributing the Faridabad Majdoor  
Samaachaar in Gurgaon, Udyog Vihar.

*** Long list of short workers' reports about wage and working  
conditions in Gurgaon factories. The reports are gathered/spread  
during the monthly distribution of 'Faridabad Majdoor  
Samaachaar' (Faridabad Workers' News). The reports were gathered/ 
spread between November 2008 and March 2009. We can see an impact of  
the economic slump, particularly in the automotive manufacturing  
sector, where shift hours have been reduced.

Alankar Creation
Anand Nishikawa (Maruti Suzuki supplier)
Bharat Export
Bharat International
Campari Export
Chintu Fashion
Condor
Dhir International (textiles for GAP)
Eastern Medikit
Evergreen International
Femme Highfashion Garments
Gaurav International (textiles for GAP)
GOM Export
Grafty Export
Gulati Export
Instyle
Krishna Label
Lara Exports
Logwell Forge (Maruti Suzuki supplier)
Mass Enterprise
Mag Filter (Maruti Suzuki supplier)
Mod Syrup Industries
Modelama (textiles for GAP)
Modern Lace House
MY Fashion
Omega Design
Orient Clothing
Pearl Global
Premium Moulding and Pressing
Richa and Company
Richa Global
Ridhima Export
Radnik Export
Rangi International
Rolex Auto
Sargam Export
S&R Export
Shahi Exports (Faridabad: GAP, Old Navy, Target, Spirit and Hugo Boss)
Spark
Viva Global
Winter Wear

*** Proletarian Poverty and Common Wealth Games - After a deadly work  
accident on the huge Common Wealth Games construction site in Delhi  
workers struck and destroyed company property. The accident was just  
the last straw - the general working-conditions are bad enough and  
the credit and profit squeezed construction companies (see short  
summary) have to pass the squeeze on to the workers. People's Union  
for Democratic Rights has just published a report on the conditions  
on the site:
http://www.pudr.org/index.php? 
option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179

*** Another fatal factory fire -
On 1st of May 2009 the Lakhani shoe factory in Faridabad Sector-24  
caught fire, six workers were killed, 30 more were injured severely.  
According to workers, a blast in the boiler next to the basement of  
the two-storey factory caused the fire. The police claim that the  
factory owner has disappeared.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Tecumseh Workers' Report about re-structuring process and  
workers' resistance at Tecumseh compressor manufacturing factory,  
formerly belonging to the multi-national Whirlpool.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain  
company policies

*** Real Estate of Crisis in Gurgaon -
Short summary about current real estate crisis in Gurgaon. The gold  
rush is over, the makers of neo-liberal bubble-town Gurgaon leave  
behind concrete-steel skeletons, tomb-stones of their unfinished  
business.

*** Security Fears -
Private-Public Re-armament in Gurgaon. One of the main real estate  
developers DLF now ventures into the boom sector of crisis, profiting  
from the post-Mumbai-attack upper-middle-class paranoia: in Gurgaon  
DLF sets up a training camp for it's Terra Force, a security company  
based on low-paid labour of a migrant-peasant work-force.

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** Glossary
Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to  
know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in alphabetical  
order.



On 12-May-09, at 9:29 PM, faiz ullah wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Instances of strike in India have been coming down year after year.  
> About
> 800 in '94, 250 in '04 and about 170 in the 2008. What could be the  
> factors?
> Is it because there's growing insecurity amongst workers, given  
> that a lot
> of companies are using recession as an alibi to put more pressure  
> on their
> workers? But this is more recent. Have trade unions become weaker?  
> Or things
> have simply been getting better?
>
>
>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net