Labour

The continuing indecision about the land belonging to the textile mills in Mumbai has hurt the dry, poor and rich alike. In a city starved of land for housing, commerce and recreation, the bringing of 300 to 400 acres of centrally-located land on the market cannot but have a desirable impact, particularly if a large chunk of the new land were to be earmarked for low income housing at high density.

Using primary and secondary data this paper shows that the origins of the phenomenon of independent unionism in the Bombay mill industry were embedded in the dynamics of technological transformation within the industry as well as in the struggles of the workers at the mill level over time. The evolution of both the structure of collective negotiations and the structure of textile unionism occurs simultaneously. Thus not only does the bargaining structure result from prior union-management negotiations and varying capital intensities within firms in an industry, but the type of unionism is transformed during these processes. Examining the opposing forces of the law in preserving the status quo in the form of the BIR Act and the role of the 1982 strike in breaking down the state-imposed industry-wide bargaining structure in the industry, it is observed that the strike was partially successful.

Two inferences seem to follow from the data on industrial disputes published in the January 1984 issue of Indian Labour Journal First, throughout the period 1974 to 1982, the time lost per industrial dispute and the time lost per worker were several times more in the case of lock-outs than in that of strikes. In other words, lockouts by managements were of much longer duration than strikes by workers. One likely explanation may be that owners of out-dated plant and machinery resort to lock-outs either as a step towards closing down their units or as a pressure tactic for extracting more aid and concessions from the government. 

Union Commerce Minister V P Singh apparently underestimated the influence of the Bombay textile mill owners' lobby over his party's government and has hence been forced to retrace his steps. The prolonged strike by roughly two lakh textile workers in Bombay's textile mills, organised by Datta Samant's Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union, has petered out. About 15,000 workers have been retrenched following modernisation in some of the reopened mills. And another 36,000 workers are yet to get back their jobs owing to the alleged sickness of 12 mills which are at present virtually closed. Maharashtra's Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil and leaders of the Congress(I)'s Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh, in their discussions with the Commerce Minister during the latter's visit to Bombay on September 26, pressed for government take-over of the sick mills. 

As Bombay's textile workers have gone back to work, following the petering out of Datta Samant's long strike, the millowners, it is clear, have extracted the maximum advantage out of their helplessness. And the state government, not surprisingly, instead of exercising its powers, is pretending to be leaving it to the courts to provide justice to the workers.