The all-India workers’ strike last Friday — involving 150 million employees — appears to have had only partial impact in the country. In Kerala and Tripura, where the ruling Left Front supported the employees’ cause wholesale, the effect was total. On the other hand, the national capital and Mumbai remained mostly untouched. If the RSS-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which used to support such actions when the Congress was in power, had come out along with all the major national trade unions like All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), Delhi and Mumbai might not have remained untouched.
On sectoral issues and those concerning wider economic matters, including the demand from industry to revamp the country’s labour laws to enable an easily enforceable “hire and fire” regime in order to check labour market distortions, the BMS view is unlikely to be very different from the other major unions, but evidently the RSS-oriented union did not desire to embarrass the Modi government. Although the strike call lacked a punch, it is plain that the country cannot afford such actions for a longer period. A call for a one-day strike is mainly symbolic and resorted to in order to draw the attention of the government to the economic conditions of workers.
This strike had included the demands of workers of organised industry as well as the informal sector though the major unions are not always able to get into the informal sector, which is widely dispersed. What the government cannot afford to ignore is the fact that the workers demanded conspicuous governmental efforts — by improving the public distribution system, for instance — to help bring down the prices of essential commodities which have remained unconscionably high for some two years. They also sought to draw the government’s attention to the grim employment situation.
Whatever the causes for these strong negatives in the system, the wider middle class, to say nothing of the rural poor, is also raising these same critical issues already. If these blocks are able to come together even for limited purposes, the government is likely to find itself on a sticky wicket. The issues that the dalits are currently raising are apparently non-economic in nature, but are perhaps rooted in their worsening economic prospects and can be fuelled by it.
The charter of demands of the workers has sought a minimum wage of Rs 18,000 per month in the informal and the formal sector. This practically means the doubling of the wage rate. Most employers, not just households and small businesses, are unlikely to be able to afford this. The government too may find its fiscal deficit targets going out of hand if it agreed to this demand. National unions should pitch their proposals more realistically.
