Articles by Dilip Subramanian

This paper aims to examine how ITI sought to respond to the challenges and threats posed by deregulation, and the impact these actions had on the employees. It concentrates on the initiatives pursued by the company in order to build a workforce and forge labour policies tailored more closely to the imperatives of competition, and evaluates how far these objectives were achieved. For in the management's own words, ITI needed to evolve from being a 'production agency of DoT' to a 'business company' - an evolution which called for it to embrace new strategic options as well as new ways of doing things, if it was to stand a chance of survival in the changed business environment. In the field of labour relations, these revised priorities would take two main directions: the implementation of a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS), and the tightening of disciplinary controls together with cutbacks in welfare benefits.

Since independence the government has striven to adopt wage fixation policies with regard to public sector organised labour. Initially the role was discharged by the judiciary and a while later by a tripartite machinery - the wage boards. However, the setting up of the Bureau of Public Enterprises in the early 1960s signalled a shift to greater centralisation. Despite the bureau's existence as a 'supra-bureaucracy', its attempts to impose wage standardisation and salary restraints, but for a brief period during the emergency years, proved by and large ineffectual.

A Critical Appraisal II: The Strike Dilip Subramanian The longest and costliest conflict in the history of the public sector in India, the Bangalore public sector strike of 1980-81 possessed a number of characteristics specific to it, The confrontation directly pitted the unions against the government and that too the central government which could deploy the full might of all the institutions of state power to smash the workers' resistance. This would have a decisive influence on the nature and outcome of the struggle. Secondly, even though generalised and massive, the strike was above all an affair of the leadership. Beyond a few symbolic agitations, the Joint Action Front made no serious attempt to draw the mass of workers into the struggle. This again would have an important effect on the distribution of power between the two sides during the course of the struggle. Thirdly, the strike remained, by and large' extremely peaceful despite the highly aggressive attitude of the government in the later stages of the conflict. Finally, this was the first time in the country that a collective leadership coming from different political horizons was leading such a large strike and for such a long period. From start to finish, the workers' representatives manifested a remarkable degree of unity and allowed no dissensions to trouble the organisation and co-ordination of the struggle.