The long dark tea time of the soul

Very frequently, I read about Indian growth being bogged down because of the lack of ‘Labour reforms’ in India. That led me to ponder about the meaning of the term ‘Labour Reforms’? Searching the dictionary.com, I found out that Labour means “a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages;” and Reform means “To change for the better”. Then I wondered why would anyone in his sane mind oppose “the change for the better” of the “social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages”?

And in that question lies the answer. The change for the better for whom? Does the collective term of labour reform actually “for” the benefit of the labour? Or is it a misnomer, like so many other neoliberal phrases, and actually means something entirely different? I decided to do some google search. I added the keyword India, because I wanted to know its impact especially in the Indian context. This is what I found from some random websites.

One website (somewhere in www.indianexpress.com) actually claims that the most important reform needed is the right to employers to fire its employees, at will if the organization is not doing well. Superb logic. I never thought of this definition of reform. So according to the newspaper, the growth rate of 7% of India is not being pushed upwards only because the ‘maalik’ cannot terminate the services of the ‘worker’. It went on to say that since all the paisa has been invested by the maalik, he has full right to maximise his income. So in teh analysis, everything has been reduced to a multiple of money. So each worker is Rs. 2000-10000, each worker’s child is Rs. 500-2000, each worker’s wife is Rs. 1000-2000, his heart is Rs 1000, his mind is Rs. 1000, his life is Rs. 4000. So when we typecast everything into Rupees, then if the LHS is less than or equal to the RHS, some amount should be subtracted from the RHS, re-convert that into equal number of workers, and throw them out. Such a simple solution to positivise all those account books.

Of course, after this hire-and-fire thing, there comes the no-strike funda. Isn’t it natural. One sad aspect of all labour movements is that the protests are led by a few and often the unruly ones. So, everytime there will be a strike, it will be a fire-fire chop-chop of a select few and the rest will fall in line. Left parties of India have also undermined strike as a form of protest, by doing it so often for very imaginary and frivollous reasons. It is to be understood that strike is really the last resort available to the workers and whenever it happens the management should sit down and think. Like what happenned in the Toyota factory near Bangalore. Or with Honda workers in Gurgaon. And of course the neo-liberal corporate media, like Indian Express, plays the horror stories of FDI vanishing from India, companies packing up and Japan getting angry over these protests. So, is that the cost of foreign direct investment? Give us money, and we will give you our people. The complete package, people who work, people who don’t talk, and who don’t think. Give us money and you get the complete package, dignity of the worker comes free as an additional incentive. Invest here directly. Grow our GDP. Kill our people. So while workers are doing those 14 hour double shifts for half the money, we are here sipping coffee, reading newspapers and lamenting their protests, their unpatriotism, there existence. So much for reforming labour.

Labour reforms. I went through the text of the proposed reforms, and nowhere it mentions the essentials. That women should get 3 months paid maternity leave, that men should get 15 days paid paternity leave, that company must take care of health insurance for each individual and family, and that profit be shared with the employees, that contract labour must come to an end. That the workplace and the nature of job should not cause any hazard on worker’s health. These are essentials, which we tend to ignore, which are followed in the mecca of reformed labour the USA and Japan. No, how will the corporate make money, if we propose these reforms? The workers are there, so that the MNC’s can get their work done cheap, make quality product at minimum cost, sell them to the vast array of neavue-rich in India and in short, make money. In between all this we see the corporates (national and international) fighting the fringe benefit tax, because the management now will not be able to get the freebies, no tax-excemption goodies, no way to mass-produce those fake food, fake telephone bills, fake travelling expenses to avoid paying taxes to the Government of India. One year of FBT and income tax collection rises by more than 20%. So, the top management is bleeding. Now the CII does not want FBT. Its a negative measure according to them, a measure that does not allow rich to rob some more money from the government, and it reduces their spending capacity. Thus decelarating the GDP growth. So much for CII’s demand for reforming labour. This from companies that cannot provide adequate security to its women employees so that they can take calls from the world over during night-shifts.

95% of our workforce is in the unorganised sector. Does labour reform talk about them? Does it mention that your household ‘bai’ must get one day off per week, that your driver should not work more than 8 hours a day, that you have to pay overtime rates if they are not doing so? Does it say that the security guards should work 8 hour shifts, and because they are security-guards, should be insured for life and other personal damage inflicted in the course of the duty? No. They don’t exist in the whole ambut of reforms. They don’t contribute to the organisation’s coffers, they don’t contribute to the organization’s growth, they don’t contribute to our nation’s GDP, or its growth percentage. They are resources, just like the building. Use them and throw them.

Thats the India of tomorrow. That’s what Mr. S. Aiyar of TOI dreams of. That’s the latest campaign by Indian Express. A labour reformed, a labour robbed of his soul.