Explain the Evolution of industrial relation in India?

Answer 1

What are Industrial Relations?Industrial relations define relationships between employers and employees toward each other in terms of supervision, direction, planning and coordination of organizational activities, with minimal human effort and functions; all this done with an enthusiastic spirit taking into consideration the safety of all employees. Industrial relations may also be defined as relations between employees and management. Evolution of Industrial Relations:The evolution of industrial relations in India began a long time ago. The Caste System greatly influenced the ancient industries and their development. Due to successive foreign invasions in India, the living conditions of slave and artesian couldn't be differentiated. Furthermore, under the autocratic regime of Muslim rulers, the conditions of employees worsened. Wages were not guaranteed, the living conditions of workers were harsh, and there was no proper management. The coming of the British didn't improve the working conditions. After some time, however, most Indian industries were modeled after the British system of business, and this led to growth in various sectors. Industrial Relations under British Rule:During British rule, India was expected to be a colonial market for British goods up until a cotton mill was established in Mumbai in 1853 and a jute mill was established in Kolkatta in 1955. The working conditions of workers, however, were still very harsh with low pay, and this gave rise to various disputes involving the management and employees. On the other hand, Tata Iron and Steel industry was also established in Jamshedpur in 1911. While there was great demand of iron and steel before and during the First World War, the working conditions of workers hadn't improved. Hence, the Factories Act of 1881 was established, and it granted workers certain rights. Industrial Relations in First World War:The First World War was an opportunity in disguise for local factories in India. Prices of virtually all products went up and profits soared, however, wages of lower employees were still the same. There were various strikes and disputes between management and employees. During this time, the Workmen's Compensation Act (1923), the Trade Union Act (1926), and the Trade Disputes Act (1917) were established. While the wages of employees remained the same, they were given a certain share of profits made by their hiring industry. Strikes, however, were sometimes prohibited under the Emergency Rules. The years following World War II involved the most workers' upheaval, and saw the establishment of Industrial Employment Act (1946) and Industrial Disputes Act (1947). Post-Independence Industrial Relations:The post-independence era saw a developing relation between industry and labor. A conference called the Industrial Truce Resolution took place in 1947, and foresaw the establishment of the Minimum Wages Act, Factories Act, and Employees State Insurance Act in 1948. This ensured peace between labor and industry. While industrial relations in India have evolved a long way, some features of the early system still exist today. Modern industrial relations are dynamic, and may integrate industrial policies of American and British businesses.

History of Trade Unions in India

The evolution of trade unions is based on the objectives and interests of communal groups as a result of modern industrialization (Zeiltin 1987), this interest are context dependent. It is had to have regulations to ensure that this trade unions and collective bargaining institutions remain focused to their roles. So where do India trade history begin.

The First Phase Occurred From 1957-1966

The historical development of trade unions in India is described as occurred in four phases, which was related with the changes in the economy. We shall examine all the four phases. The first occurred before independence from 1957-1966. This period is termed as a period of national capitalism. Which was characterised by a state sponsored industrialization policy that was based on importation of substitutes that lead to large unemployment. The unemployment rate increased to 2% annual from1961-1966 (Venkata 1987). Due to this public employment lead to formation of sector unionism bringing the number of registered unions from 4623 in 1951 to 11,614 in 1962 (Venkata, 1987). The most dominant trade union was the communist one known as all India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) it was dominant in textile and engineering. The huge public sector lead to entry of large scale unions, this saw the emergency of new inroads by the trade union controlled by the congress party ; the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). As opposed to the AITUC the INTUC had a proper chain of command coming from the party to the union the party was headed by the prime minister during that period.

Venkata (1987) observers that, the INTUC leadership was first loyal to the congress party, and then to the current congress government and lastly to the workers who are union members. When the INTUC is faced with solving a dispute between the government and the workers, the INTUC also supported the government side. This was because all the official dealing with the union was congress government appointees. The officials were always requested by the government to support it in order to overpower rival unions (Datta 1994). This relationship among the government and unions in the first phase of trade unions seemed to result in the formation of labour laws. As seen when industrial dispute act was formed, this is an important labour law between the employer and the employee. Yet, it did not have provisions for processes to represent the employee as a collective bargaining body. In summary, this first phase was characterized by state led industrialization that required government guidance in labour unions. The laws formed were biased and the concept was that the government knew better than the workers.

Second Phase of Labour Union from 1967-1974

This was from1967-1974; this corresponded with the high inflation period when the inflation went beyond 10% mark. During this period industrial stagnation occurred (Datta 1994) industries production went down to 3.6%. The structural changes that occurred in India during this period also affected the labour markets and its relationships. The period saw an increased number of labour disputes resulting in strikes and lockouts (Morley 2006). Workers become disillusioned with INTUC management and small trade unions were formed which were supported by different political parties. This phase reflected a period of crisis between the states controlled labour union and the workers. This period saw increase in labour unions which were not effective as by 1979 the number of registered unions went up to 10,021 where as the size of this labour unions increased so little. This meant that the power of this unions were limited. It can be argued that this was an attempt by the unions and the state to reach at new governance and improve the bargaining power of the union. As time went by it became clear that they was trouble in the union monopoly, specifically in the public sector. This was due to the factor that the public sector unions who had their official appointed by the government were paid well by the government. In contrast the private sector unions had to bargain a lot to receive such benefits in a private sector that was competitive. This period saw this unions looking for a common voice in an increased disputes environment.

Phase Three Occurred From 1980- 1991

This phase was witnessed between 1980-91 this period was during the five year economic plan of 1985-90 that saw the economy grow by 5.7 percent. This phase was characterized by emergence of independent unions in India. These unions arouse basically as a result of lack of strong bargaining power by the traditional unions (Datta 1994). Due to increased demand for labour unions which were more organized, better employers, two types of unions emerged, those that were altruistic and those that were selfish (Zeitlin 1987). The altruistic unions bargained for more wage increment for the workers, while the selfish ones were more interested in cooperating in the macro level. This made it hard to have a fair and efficient polices in the labour movement. Once more, this phase did not yield serious changes in the industrial relations regulations and laws.

Phase Four Occurred From 1992-2000

This stage saw the government adopt the World Bank -IMF structural adjustment plans this saw a lot of liberalization in the economy sector. This meant that barging power was decentralised; this meant that the government influence on labour unions reduced so much. The market experienced less disputes in the labour markets and a stop to union divisions. The positive aspect of this was that more employment was created and the labour unions increased it voice both on macro and micro level. India has experienced a lot of differences in the trade unions, the political parties and the state; these differences have hindered the enactment of industrial relations reforms. The worrying effect of luck of reaching a national agreement on labour unions reform is the lack of the labour unions to have a national effect and lack of power to bring industrial relations.

Collective Bargaining Power

The collective bargaining power of the labour unions was experienced more in the third and fourth phase. This lead to redesigning of agreements to cover stopping of recruitment of employees, halting of job transfers from bargain able group to non bargain able. The bargains also touched on voluntary retirements, transfer of stable permanent jobs to temporary one (Morley 2006). Though, the management had an upper hand, the unions also made some gains such as awarding of allowances for instance, house rent allowance, allowing pregnant mothers not to do computer work, allowing voluntary retired workers to take contract jobs, and much more. The government has continued to resist passing laws to increase minimum wages level. The trade unions have united to force the government to accept to increase the wages in a period of 5 years instead of the government proposed 10 years plan. Pressure from workers and employers in both public and private by sector to decentralize the bargaining power is going on.

Challenges Faced By the Indian Labour Unions

The challenges facing the labour unions in India are how to tackle the implications of implementation global policies (Morley 2006). Today India labour markets are faced with an increase in international capital movement which is causing restructuring of many industries, and satellite production units are replacing big production factories. This situation is causing the management to lie off, retrench, or lock out workers, in worst cases the management even resort to closure. In new plants being put up workers are being exploited by working long hours, being paid poorly and being exposed to other exploitative ways. Much industrial management in India are implementing these new measures which are decreasing the bargaining power of labour unions. The Indian government, the labour systems and also the judiciary are working with industries to undermine the labour unions by refusing to intercede in the labour disputes or by misinterpreting the laws in a way that it supports the global capital process, which are offensive to workers' welfare.

Even though, this is going on still the pro market supporters and the industrial managers feel that they are not given enough support. To them, the workers wages should be reduced to lower level because of market competition. Thus, labour unions are faced with a bigger challenge to ensure that they fight against the industries' managers to reduce or stop employees from being exploited. India labour markets is facing pressure from the international capital organisations such as World Bank to change the current labour laws which if changed will reduce legal protection of labour unions and consequently lead to reduced bargaining power of the unions. It is within this context that, labour unions are faced with challenging issues pertaining how to improve the working conditions of the employees and also at the same time maintain good industrial relations.

Model of Indian labour unions compared to others

The labour unions in India differ with other models in the world because; in India labour unions are based on political parties. In that, most of the unions are sponsored or backed by political parties (International Journal of HRM 2006). The government also has been the major player in the labour market by assuming different roles sometimes conflicting roles in labour unions. In India, there is no central labour union as in other countries. It seems that, the centralised labour unions that were there mainly at some stage in the phase one of labour industry lost momentum in the second phase and disappeared in the third phase (Jacoby 1994). The fragmented unions have tried to bargain for better agreements but in most cases have not succeeded because of employer's resistance. Some observers suggest that the unions have gone on defensive side since the start of reforms on the labour markets (Zeitlin 1987). In other countries labour unions are central organisations which have strong bargaining powers, in some instance, this organisation at times have immense political powers.

Industrial relations

The industry brings together the employer or management and the worker, while the interest of the management is ensure that the gap between product price of the labour cost is wide the employees' interest to get more for the services rendered. As seen before the relationship among the employer and the employee is referred as industrial relations (IR). The main aim of industrial relations is to minimize industrial disagreement. In India, statistics show that most of the disputes occur due to wages and allowances disagreements, workers' indiscipline, that lead to violence; and retrenchment of workers (Venkata1987). The industrial disputes Act of 1947 outlines the procedures of investigating and settling of the disagreements to ensure peace in the industries.

Objectives of the Industrial Relations

There are several objectives of industrial relation; we shall examine only the first three. The main objective of industrial relation is to protect the interest of workers and the management by providing common understanding between the workers and the industry management. Second; is to evade industrial disagreements or conflicts and enhance good relations which are an important factor in workers' productivity and progression of the industries. Third; to create and develop the growth of democracy in the industries that is founded on labour partnership that promotes sharing of profits and also management decisions to foster individual growth of workers and at the same time benefit the industry and the country as a whole (Morley 2006).

Suggestions to improve industrial relations

It has been suggested that, in order to improve the industrial relations, the management should carry out the following. The management together with the union has to develop constructive feelings towards each other. There should be clear industrial relations policies and procedures that everybody in the union understands and agrees with. It should be the work of the personnel manager to ensure that, these polices are clearly understood by the manager. It is also important that the personnel manager don't vie with the union offer gaining workers' loyalty because it will lead to frictions in the relations. However, some studies suggest that, a worker may have a dual allegiance (Singh 2000). Lastly, the management has to encourage the union members to have a good leadership in the union, while at the same time it should not interfere with the affairs of the union.

Conclusion

Industrial relation is an important aspect in the running of industries, it is important for the employees and employers to have good working relations to ensure continuous high industrial production. For the industrial relations to be enhanced there should support from management of the industries, good personnel policies and a constant review of the policies so that they remain relevant with changes in labour relations laws that occur over time. India labour unions have taken a long period in developing, though, today it is more organised than before, and it still has low bargaining power compared to other labour unions in other countries. This is probably because it is not centralized and small unions always lack high collective power. The challenges the labour unions have, is how to gain better bargaining power and tackle the effects of global capital markets new polices.

Answer 2

Industrial relations in India have evolved from a colonial-era system to a more employee-centric approach. The introduction of labor laws, trade unions, and collective bargaining has played a significant role in shaping industrial relations in the country. More recently, there has been a shift towards greater emphasis on employee welfare, social dialogue, and dealing with workplace conflicts through conciliation and arbitration. The government has also been actively promoting labor reforms to modernize industrial relations and create a more conducive environment for both employers and employees.