A Strike in India: Part II

Returning to the recent strike in India that I discussed briefly in my last entry, let’s consider the demands of the strikers. According to the PTI report that I mentioned in my last entry, some of the reasons given for the strike are:

• The current UPA government’s proposals to sell some of its shares in certain public sector companies


• Proposed “dilution” of a law by which any firm with 100 or more employees needs the government’s permission (almost never obtained) to fire any employee (I am not making this up!)


• Proposals to turn the Security Press, which prints paper currency, and the government mints into independent corporations


• Proposals to involve private companies in the modernization of the airports, which are all government owned and operated


• The postponement of the Pay Commission’s review of the salaries of public sector employees


• A new system of taxes on savings schemes


• Proposals to merge weaker public sector banks into the larger ones

This list of demands may leave many non-Indian readers scratching their heads in incomprehension. In America, where I live, fewer than 10 percent of private sector employees belong to trade unions. I happen to be a proud member of the faculty union at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, New York. We are no patsies; we have gone on strike during all of the last three contract negotiations (with varying degrees of success). But on all those occasions, we—that is, all members of our union—voted by secret ballot on the strike proposal before going on strike. And we struck about things like pay increases, health insurance, pensions, tenure, more time to do research, and other similar issues focused narrowly on our concerns about how our employer was treating us. Going on strike to protest against the economic policies of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush was, needless to say, never on the cards.

The key to the contrast between strikers’ demands in India and America lies in understanding that the main unions in India are extensions of its main political parties. Each political party has its own affiliated labor union and these unions dominate the labor landscape. As a result, the labor movement in India has become hostage to the larger political battles within India.

Another important contrast between strikes in America and in India is related to the use of coercion. I have already said that my union does not go on strike without taking a vote on the issue first. Moreover, the union never even tries to punish those who cross the picket line. We stay angry at our recalcitrant colleagues for a while, but pretty soon all is forgotten and forgiven. Things are very different in India. Violence is routinely used by union members and their hired toughs to shut down entire cities, and not just to prevent the crossing of picket lines by members of the striking unions. During Thursday’s strike, the entire state of West Bengal was shut down by the strikers. There was no public transport. All offices, businesses, schools, and colleges were shut down for the day. (The American equivalent would require that when Long Island University professors go on strike they shut down all activity on Long Island.)

The government does nothing to stop this. During Thursday’s strike, the West Bengal government issued special stickers for cars that were meant to take employees of information technology firms, which stood to lose heavily because their foreign clients would be unlikely to tolerate a daylong interruption of services, to work, hoping that those cars would be let through. But that did not happen; the stickered cars were blocked and their tires deflated. (Incidentally, the issuance of the stickers was an implicit acknowledgement by the government that compliance is coerced in Indian strikes; if those who wish to go to work could go to work, the stickers would not have been necessary.)

Jo Johnson’s report on the strike in The Financial Times of September 29, 2005, begins as follows:

Tensions between India’s Congress-led government and its communist allies are
expected to erupt on to the streets today during a nationwide strike by more
than 1m bank and airport workers against the administration’s economic
policies.

American readers must not assume that all those one million bank and airport workers were polled by secret ballot on the strike proposal. The union leaders, who usually are also members of the political parties that the unions are spawned from, make these decisions and the party muscle is then used to coerce compliance.

This deadly combination of unions affiliated to political parties and union decision-making that disdains grassroots democracy has reduced the Indian labor movement to a very costly joke at the nation’s expense and turned unions into pawns on the political chessboard.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (or, CPI-M) is particularly reliant on this cynical use of labor’s power. It is actually a relatively weak party with a base limited to the Indian states of West Bengal (where I spent the first 23 years of my life and where I still have strong ties), Kerala, and Tripura. It is precisely its lack of an India-wide grassroots base that has led the CPI-M to rely so desperately on strikes and strike threats. It has no power except the power to use its labor unions to shut large parts of the country down and thereby inflict widespread economic pain.

The cynicism of the communists is reflected in a phrase in Jo Johnson’s report that may have startled non-Indian readers: “communist allies.” The CPI-M is actually part of a quasi-coalition with the UPA government. The communists actually sat down with the UPA and thrashed out a plan called the Common Minimum Program before the current government took office. The UPA depends on the communists’ support in parliament for its very existence. The communists could bring the UPA government down by simply voting against any bill that they do not like. So, why are they causing mayhem on the streets instead?

If the UPA government is brought down the CPI-M would lose all the advantages of being a member of the governing quasi-coalition. Moreover, they don’t want the right-wing parties to return to power. The strike was a pre-emptive move designed to scare the UPA government into not bringing any bill to parliament that the CPI-M would be forced to vote against (and thereby bring down the UPA government). The whole idea was to keep their unions happy by stymieing all attempts at reform and to at the same time ensure continued rule by the UPA-communist quasi-coalition.

I feel sorry for the UPA government and especially Dr. Manmohan Singh, its distinguished leader. With “allies” like the communists, who needs the opposition?