Seeking Professionalism

But the call for increased competence and professionalism in the leadership and functioning of trade unions has not gone down well with everybody. This is not to suggest that major departures from the past in trade union practices can be staved off for long. Both the CPI(M)-affiliated Centre of Trade Unions (CITU) and the Congress-affiliated Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) find the proposal attractive enough to merit serious consideration. But the CPI-affiliated All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) is rather sceptical.

INTUC leader Chandrachud Dasgupta, who heads the white-collar employees' union at the Tea Board, defends the demand for professionalism: "With the information explosion and the pushing back of the frontiers of technology, the very nature of industry and business has changed beyond recognition. Unless the organised working class keeps abreast of what is happening globally and educates itself, workers will no longer be able to defend their own interests. In India, we only have some legal assistance to safeguard workers' interests in emergencies. In future, this will not be enough. Some of us feel the assistance of full-time experts who will help us collect, collate and assess new information about industrial development, changes in production techniques and progress in industrial research is absolutely necessary. They are the exclusive domain of big industry at the moment. The days of part-time trade union leaders, no matter how individually brilliant or influential they may be, are numbered."

Young Dasgupta's views are shared by the grizzled veteran of the movement, former MP and president of CITU, Niren Ghosh, who is known for his hardline approach on the new economic policy. Says he: "I think there is no harm in increasing our knowledge about industries, the technological changes and the global trends as a whole. Micro-problems relating to financial demands or routine matters can be left to leaders at other levels. There can be no objection to seeking professional or expert assistance in the collection of data that concern our interests and their evaluation, even from the outside."

Other sources within INTUC point out that at one level, this specialisation would represent a coming of age, as it were, of the trade union movement in India. Says an observer: "How can anyone expect a part-time leader or MP to speak for the interests of workers in the pharmaceutical, chemical, steel, aviation, jute or construction industries merely on the strength of his being the leader of this or that central trade union organisation? Today, during negotiations, senior leaders are often briefed by their juniors who themselves are employees and attend to trade union duties on a part-time basis. Most of the time, they have to rely on the masters—whether in the private or public sectors—for basic statistics regarding their own sector."

 The AITUC Vice-President, MP Gurudas Dasgupta, does not quite agree: "I think the call for full-time professionals in leadership roles in trade unions is fraught with dangerous consequences. To begin with, competence alone cannot be a substitute for dedication or commitment; which is what trade unionism is about, or should be. In case special inputs are needed in trade union functioning, surely they can be obtained from experts. What worries me is the implication that such people should find a place in the leadership structure within trade unions, although they might not even have had a nodding acquaintance with the theories and principles and the essence of trade unionism. I cannot imagine anyone seriously suggesting this."

 In turn, a senior trade union leader notes that dedication alone is not necessarily the best of guarantees for safeguarding the interests of the working class. Says he: "I remember how during our negotiations on jute strikes here, a very senior and respected trade union leader represented CITU. There was no whisper of any financial scandal. Yet, when it came to the laborious nitty-gritty of bargaining between labour and management, usually the latter won. You see, neither the leader nor the employees he led had all the details relating to how much production could be expected during different seasons and what effect the variations in machine output had on productivity, and how far the management could be held accountable for all this. The management had the statistics and they withheld crucial information until the moment of decision-taking. Effective trade unionism these days is much more than good intentions or commitment. The only alternative is to arm yourself with information and then talk terms."

INTUC's Rabin Majumdar, leader of the Bata Mazdoor Union, goes further in his argument for new thinking in trade unionism: "I understand Jyoti Basu urging us workers to improve productivity and to be more disciplined. For, unless the workers' units do well, they lose out to competition and put their own jobs in jeopardy. I do not understand others in the CPI(M) not challenging Basu, yet attacking the policy of liberalisation that the Congress has initiated. It has to be understood that the Marxist view portraying employers and the management as bloodsucking villains who must be fought and destroyed is obsolete shibboleth. The worker has a stake in ensuring optimum production. If this is acceptable, the management and workers have to regard themselves as working partners, not as enemies."

But both Ghosh and Gurudas Dasgupta are extremely critical of the performance of the management in most industries, especially the traditional ones. Says Ghosh: "People talk of work culture and labour indiscipline. What examples have our big industries set? In West Bengal alone, 28 public sector units employing over 140,000 workers are closed at the moment. The number of private sector units closed is much more, and these figures are higher in Maharashtra. In how many cases has labour indiscipline or militancy been a major factor? And in how many cases differences within the management, corruption at the top level and wrong policy decisions have been responsible for the closure of units?"

And so, while Majumdar has written an informative booklet extolling the merits of the new economic policies, Niren Ghosh has virtually demolished them in an equally informative booklet written from a Left perspective, indicating how it has effectively helped the cause of only exporters and non-resident Indians.

But while it would be too much to expect INTUC and the CITU to agree on everything, both organisations admit that of late common workers have been taking less interest than before in trade union activities and the response to membership drives is mostly lukewarm. CITU also notes a tendency among new entrants to aspire for leadership positions right away rather than work their way up patiently. In the end, a critical self-analysis may just throw up the right strategy for these organisations to adapt to the new order.