On Thursday 15 October 2009, Amol Hatwar wrote: > ** My Comments Inline **
> > > >> The aim of trade left unions are improve the living conditions of > >> the > >> workers and getting their needs met. > > > > Dont make me laugh. Personal experience of living thru the violence > > and misery > > caused by unionism because they have a complete lack of > > understanding (or > > atleast their actions show such a lack) of how economics works, > > showed me > > otherwise. To give you a few examples L & T, the mill strikes, small > > industry > > unrest in ghatkopar and vikhroli, National Rayon Corp. Ambivli, Amar > > Dye > > Chem, Century Rayon Kalyan, Several factories in Ambad Nasik, Bush > > and > > Murphy India, Mukand Iron and steel, Kamani Engineering, Siemens > > Kalwa, > > Premier automobiles, GKW Bhandup, Godrej etc. > > Unions are good, management needs to be kept in check every once in a > while. But the way thing perpetrated in all the above examples were > bad. As they say, too much of anything is bad. Not at all. Unions arise not where there is injustice (with one ironical exception that i know of), but where there is a fast buck to be made. Thus if an industry is doing "well", the union (worker) will demand a cut of the profit pie as their birth right. And the union will take away a hughe chunk of the settlement - either from the management by short selling the workers or from the workers directly ( two to 6 months of the increased wages). This was without exception the norm in Maharashtra and Ghaziabad. I have no direct experience in other states. Also without exception wherever militant trade unions rose, industries collapsed. The ironical exception was Dr. Datta Samant (he was an MBBS practising medicine in Vikhroli and Ghatkopar) who started a fight for quarry workers near IIT Powai. Then started the mill workers protest, eventually short selling them. A large number of workers joined his Union (Kamgar Aghadi) not because the managements were bad or they were short changed or facing some injustice (with the mill strike being an exception), but merely to get a bigger wage, inspite of being amongst the most highly paid. What happened was those industries lost competitiveness and simply migrated to areas with cheaper labour. To be unbiased one must state that those industries would anyway have come under pressure and would have to take the same steps anyway, the unions exacerbated and accelerated the process. The result was a disorderly collapse, rather than a (probably) smooth transition. -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
