Friday, March 23, 2007

Unity is strength- but for whom?

This week will see the Bank officers and employees strike as usual, to avail of the long extended weekends/ successive holidays. The Govt will as usual condone it and sanction them bonuses and hike their DA, while the customer watches helplessly.

The power behind these strikes is the union(s) which every now and then need to flex their muscles. After all, their importance is realised then. The unions which were set up for a noble cause of 'promoting worker's unity and cordial employer-employee relationships' have only partly achieved their goal. They have ensured pay-but not performance. Bonus-but not dedication.
Gandhi and other proponents of the unions would surely be turning in their grave if they saw the present state of affairs- where people like Datta Samant use the workers as a cats paw tp achieve their political ends.

Today's DNA has an interesting article on unionisation in Kerala- where even debt collectors and private sector bank employees- have formed their own unions. Closer home, we have the Central Railway SC/ST employeed union!. I can understand organisation based unions but caste based unions!. Anyway, this is why the industries choose to produce/ manufacture in Baddi and Vapi where contract labour relieves their employee headache. Here of course, the loser is the contact labourer who gets underpaid- but then, why would the Mumbai unions care?

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