In an earlier post “Labour Reforms is key to Legal Market Economy – II”, the potential impact of labour reform on development of labour skills was outlined. The social empowering process that accords dignity to labour and helps upgrade skills is their gateway to the middle class. The previous post also implied that BJP has only been talking about skill upgrades and labour reform, but done nothing purposeful towards walking the talk.
BJP’s focus has been primarily welfare administration and nothing substantive for development of the legal market economy. BJP’s overall sense is that if laws are liberalized, land and infrastructure provided, investors shall come and development happen. The fact of the matter is that investors are mostly going to Vietnam and other ASEAN nations.
Labour Union essential to scale up:
Scaling up of the industrial unit is impossible without union participation. If there were no Unions in an organization, the cost of communicating and getting mass acceptance of thousands of workmen directly by management would be prohibitive. While union-management negotiations can be very difficult, the persuasion done by Union is normally quite reliable.
The interaction of Union and Management helps firm up healthy work-place culture. This firming up of work culture can then sustain the rapid growth of an organization if other parameters required for such growth are also available in the place. Such professionalization of workforce that brings skill upgrade along with it is a prerequisite for India becoming a leading global manufacturing hub. Even negotiated settlements for reducing the scale of operations of failing units and their winding down becomes easier for employers and fairer to labour. Rapid growth, ownership control changes and winding up, all three capabilities are required for Indian development.
Failure of Left Polity:
In India, the reasons why Left polity has failed miserably in organizing labour may be several, but the core factor is Left not accepting Legal Marketing Economy as the organizing economy principle for the Indian state. This has led to entrenched stances and not created the right kind of syncretic evolution nor dialectical synthesis necessary to transform the Indian economic scene. Success hinges on Unions accepting the premise of legal market economy and employer’s prerogatives enshrined in law.
Left polity shall be better placed to deliver on Labour reforms if their core ideas are derived from economics and sociology. Left will then be able to recognize the nature of the class struggle and roots of inequity per proper intellectual scrutiny. Left unions then will not be creating pointless ideological conflicts in the minds of the workmen, instead, the focus shall shift towards continuous improvement to provide better for basic needs, i.e. living wages, regular working hours, healthy working conditions, address gender inequality and exploitation.
The emergence of progressive Left that rides on reform for formalizing Indian labour is critical to transform all kinds of employment, be It manufacturing, service or agriculture. It begins with national political consensus on creating minimal labour laws that gain acceptance from both employers and unions, with a view to creating the right setting for the rapid formalization of Indian economy. Formalization shall deliver the labour component of productivity growth and quality upgrades via negotiated conflict resolution and motivated labour participation.
PS.: In the previous post, the phrase “legal market economy” was erroneously typed “labour market economy”. Please read the sentence as “Success hinges on all Unions accepting the premise of legal market economy and employer’s prerogatives enshrined in law.”