Trade Unions and Women's Autonomy: Organisational Strategies of Women Workers in India

 

Introduction

 

The labour force in India is as diverse as Indian society itself, divided by gender, religion, caste, region, ethnicity, language and history. In this context, the issue of equality assumes extra importance, yet trade unions have failed to tackle it with the seriousness it deserves. This failure has had an adverse effect on all sections that suffer from discrimination, above all on women, and also on the movement as a whole.

 

This chapter looks at some examples of the ways in which women workers have organised successfully, and tries to assess how far these attempts go towards addressing the issues of discrimination and equality. It adopts a case study approach, looking at six cases from a diversity of locations: The All-India Chemical and Pharmaceutical Employees’ Federation and its activities in Bombay, Maharashtra, in Western India; the Women’s Wing of the All-India Bank Employees’ Association which has branches throughout the country; The Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh and Mahila Mukti Morcha from Madhya Pradesh, Central India; the Navayuga Beedi Karmika Sangam in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Southern India; Sarba Shanti Ayog and Sasha based in Calcutta, West Bengal, in Eastern India; and SEWA, based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in Western India. The absence of North India is not accidental; this is the region where women face the most brutal violence and oppressive patriarchal control, and organising autonomously is most difficult. I have also included material from a project sponsored by Women Working Worldwide to find out if Codes of Conduct can help women workers in the garment industry, although this cannot count as a case study since the overwhelming majority of the women remain unorganised.

 

The chapter aims to show that while some progress has certainly been made, women and other disadvantaged sections remain marginalised in the labour force, and trade unions still fail to recognise the importance of tackling this issue. Finally, it argues that globalisation perhaps opens up possibilities of using new resources which might aid in the struggle for equality.

A Short History of the Employees' Unions in Bombay 1947-1991

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.