Employees’ unions emerged in the late forties and fifties as a new and increasingly dominant form of union organisation among large companies in Bombay. By ‘employees’ unions’ we mean unions which have the words ‘Employees’ Union’ or ‘Workers’ Union’ or ‘Staff and Workers’ Union’ in their name, regardless of whether they retain an outsider as their President. The counterpoint to such unions are the much larger general labour or mass unions which attract workers from a host of companies within or across industries. Till the mid- fifties, by far the best established union of this type (henceforth ‘external union’) was the AITUC. The fragmentation of the labour movement which began in the fifties with employers encouraging the expansion of INTUC as a counterpoise to the AITUC continued unabated over the following decades. The growth of outside unions exacerbated union rivalries and partly eroded the base of the employees’ unions.
We shall argue in this paper that the history of employees’ unionism in the Bombay region has to a large extent been dominated by an endemic hostility to independent unionism among managements in the area. By ‘independent unionism’ is meant the sector represented by the stronger employees’ unions and their federations, where these exist. But ‘endemic hostility’ has reflected itself in three very different styles: (1) Companies that accept employees’ unions but litigate fiercely over demands; (2) companies that pursue strategies designed to break the power of a strong internal union or union federation; and (3) companies or business groups which have never been willing to deal with unions they cannot control. These styles represent different degrees of hostility, of course. In particular, attempts to undermine the power of internal unions became a constant feature of the eighties.