High time for a United Labour Front, decentralisation of trade unions

Labour problems must be turned into election issues. Trade unions should understand that any political party can be a friend or an enemy of workers' interests without being a 'labour party'.

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THE Centre hasn't enacted the four labour codes— Wage Code (2019), Industrial Relations Code (2020), Occupational Safety and Health and Working Conditions Code (2020) and Social Security Code (2020)— passed in 2019–20 and there is significantly less chance of their implementation in the coming months.

In some countries like Australia, labour problems often become an election issue. Trade unions and politics are interwoven and as the late American industrialist and senator R.E. Flanders observed, there is no such thing as a non-political union. The most important attribute must be that trade unions should not subjugate workers' interests for political gains without any gains for them. 

Meanwhile, several other tasks, like the census of migrant and unorganised workers, haven't been completed. The government's e-Shram portal shows slow progress: 288 million out of an estimated 400 million unorganised workers have registered with the portal. Privatisation and disinvestment, the future of MNREGA and the Old Pension Scheme have been put on the backburner.  

Most unit-level workers are unaware of the details of these issues and the potential consequences of the labour codes. In the next 12 months, starting this May, trade unions have an excellent opportunity to disseminate labour issues, including the codes, at the gate and district levels most effectively. It can no longer be restricted to deliberations at the top which do not percolate to workers at the micro-level. 

Also read: Draft Rules on Trade Union Recognition and Activities are arbitrary and unreasonably restrictive

The trade union movement needs to do the following:

a) Identify crucial and non-partisan issues surrounding labour and prepare dissemination documents and material.

b) Not ignore non-trade unions, i.e., labour NGOs, people's NGOs, green NGOs, etc., to map a larger socio-political agenda that must include all issues that affect labourers as people and vice versa. A social movement unionism spearheaded by trade unions (being the oldest and most experienced social institution) must be constructed.

c) Conventions at the disaggregated levels, like districts, must be planned and executed.

d) Workers must realise that trade union consciousness is a part of political consciousness and the two are interwoven. 

Unfortunately, politics divides trade unions, leaving them to handle labour issues to the extent they can espouse. Labour problems must be turned into election issues. Trade unions should understand that any political party can be a friend or an enemy of workers' interests without being a 'labour party'.

There is a dire need for the merging of trade unions to form a United Labour Front that political parties cannot ignore. Labourers should flex their muscles and not be subservient— 500 million workers is not a small number. 

Two socio-political institutions should emerge, if not now, at least, over the new few decades— seeds of social movement unionism and a United Labour Front must be sown. Idea documents must be prepared and unions merged like in the West. Issue-based unity at the national level and fighting over Central trade union membership will not forge unity.

Together or separately, the 12 Central trade unions have successfully introduced labour reforms.

Also read: Are 2002 trade union membership statistics time-frozen for years to come?

One of the reasons possibly the Centre is not worried is that several of these reforms— changing the threshold of the Factories Act, 1948, the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, the threshold for application of fire and closure clauses (100 to 300), hours of work from 9 to 12, and women in night shift, etc.— have been enacted by several states with labour in the Concurrent List. For example, Tamil Nadu recently amended the Factories Act to introduce flexible working hours.  

Both political parties and Central and regional trade unions are hopelessly divided. Regional trade unions call the shots in states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. Unlike Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu, most states don't have a joint action committee of trade unions. 

Trade unions that have forged issue-based unity at the national level must emulate the same at the regional level. They appear strong at the national level but have no say in hiring and firing, contract labour, etc. The utility of such an alignment of institutional forces is useless. 

In fact, several Central unions are unaware of what is happening at the regional level, which is one reason states have successfully implemented reforms since 2002 when Andhra Pradesh amended the Contract Labour Act. 

Also read: Industrial Relations Code 2020: analysing "negotiating trade unions" from a gender lens

As mentioned earlier, this could be one of the reasons for not implementing the codes. Why incur political costs when the same agenda can be implemented with the least cost and at low noise at the regional level? This fails to wake up Central trade unions, who roar at the national level and whimper at the regional level, from their slumber.  

It is high time to decentralise the trade union movement, which is excessively centralised with a top-down hierarchy, and introduce institutional reforms. 

The next 12 months are a period for contemplation and reform of the trade union movement. Two outcomes are expected: labour issues become a major factor in the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign and trade unions wake up to see the harsh realities and call for decentralisation.