Article by Adhiraj Nayar
The registration of the Bellsonica Auto Component India Employees Union (henceforth, Bellsonica Employees Union) in the company’s plant in Haryana’s Manesar was cancelled by the Registrar of Trade Unions, Haryana on 23 September 2023. The reason stated for this was that the Union (consisting of only permanent workers up until then) had “illegally” and in contravention of the Trade Unions Act, 1926 (henceforth the TU Act), given membership to contract workers of the same factory – working alongside the permanent workers every day. There is nothing illegal about a Trade Union having members that are both permanent as well as contract workers, that too in the same factory! The TU Act does not differentiate or discriminate against workers employed on different kinds of tenures and contracts. The Act doesn’t even mention the terms “permanent employee” and “contract worker”. Which is why the cancellation of the registration of the Bellsonica Employees’ Union by the Haryana Labour department is itself brazenly illegal and has no legal basis in the Trade Unions Act, 1926. There is no greater an attack on working class unity than this and yet there is no outrage in the Trade Union movement about it!
Interestingly, as reported in the press statement of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), the same office of the Registrar of Trade Unions Haryana had very recently in the past approved the amendment to Rule 5 of the Union’s constitution allowing “any worker who is working” at Bellsonica the right to become a member upon payment of subscription and admission fee. So why did the same office then deem inclusion of contract workers in said union as illegal and consequently cancel its registration? As it happened, the registration of the Trade Union was only cancelled after the company’s management, rightly afraid of the prospects of unity amongst permanent and contract workers, approached the Haryana labour department to declare the move illegal and de-register the union, which the latter obediently complied with, in complete violation of the Trade Unions Act. Undeniable proof that capital knows what working class unity looks like and so ruthlessly tries to crush it.
If one was still under the illusion that when it comes to struggles between labour and capital, governments are neutral or unbiased and always follow the law of the land, this instance should certainly shatter it. Certainly, there are a lot of believers of this erroneous view even in the Trade Union movement. But to those who are involved in, or aware of, workers’ struggles for forming rank-and-file unions it will come as just the latest instance in a decades long campaign of illegal union busting by governments at all levels in India, of which the Haryana government has been a leading example for around two decades now! History clearly shows that capital and governments that do its bidding only follow labour laws as long as it benefits them, and only up to the point where they act as successful fetters on workers’ ability to organise and struggle for their demands. But whenever unions are able to turn the law in their own favour and use it to their advantage, the laws are openly disregarded and in the ultimate instance done away with or amended to make them entirely business-friendly. The four Labour Codes passed in 2019 and 2020 have done precisely this.
To state it bluntly, labour laws are a field of class struggle, they always have been, and capital and its politico-legal representatives know this all too well. Whatever rights and benefits that labour laws provided, including Trade Union rights, were all fought for and won by the working class. They were not handed to the working class by enlightened employers and governments, and now that the former is historically at its weakest, the latter have swooped in to take full advantage of it in the form of the 4 labour codes. But why is the working class strength at a historically low point?
It is so because the established Trade Unions have forgotten the fact that labour laws are a field of class struggle, or have wilfully chosen to ignore it for decades. Or may be, they have forsaken class struggle altogether and become comfortable with bourgeois legalism! Trade Unions of different bourgeois parties that do not espouse class struggle are not expected to recognise this fact, they are openly and proudly class-collaborationist. It is the Trade Unions that claim class struggle as their politics, those run by the so-called communist parties that I have a serious problem with. They claim socialism as their goal and class struggle as their path, but openly act in the most opportunist and treacherous way. They have long forsaken class struggle and working class unity for the benefits and comforts that come with selling out to the ruling class. They have systematically inculcated bourgeois legalism and class-collaboration into the trade union movement. Which is why, they have offered no real resistance to the new labour codes, except for yelling “Scrap the 4 labour codes” every now and then. Even when they speak against the labour codes, their main focus is on how the formulation of the codes flouted tri-partite mechanisms, and how it was passed without following due procedure in Parliament. As if that matters to a government hell-bent on changing the entire labour law regime of the country!
On the other hand, these unions only hark about working class unity and solidarity, but act in complete opposition to it. Most of their unions in the organised sector are exclusively those of permanent workers, and by refusing to include contract workers in their unions they have given immense credence to management lies that contract workers and permanent workers can’t be in the same unions. Irrespective of whether they sincerely believe it or not, they perpetuate this idea amongst their membership and the wider movement to hide their own treachery.
It is only when real class conscious Trade Unions emerge and start organising a common union of permanent and contract workers that this myth begins to be broken. And when such unionisation efforts are at the receiving end of capital and the State, for moving towards working class unity on the ground, all the revolutionary talk of solidarity and working class unity by these treacherous unions disappears! In fact, it is the best case scenario when these unions don’t do anything, with the worst case scenario being them siding against these unions by entering into negotiations with the management and government behind their backs, which is what happened in the historic Maruti Suzuki workers’ struggle to name just one instance!
It is because of these opportunist Trade Unions that the Indian working class movement is at its historically lowest point. Therefore, this May 1st, on International Workers’ Day, don’t get too hopeful with the headlines and pictures of May Day rallies of unions that have long abandoned the class struggle. Rather look for the unions actually engaging in class struggle against all odds and still forging real working class unity by fighting for the right to unionise permanent and contract workers into a single union, to see where the real hope lies in the working class movement. Strengthening the unity of all workers is the most important and urgent task of the movement today. Not only to defend workers’ rights, but also to wage a strong struggle against the systematic fragmentation of the working class through conctractualisation of much of the workforce, and outsourcing and sub-contracting of production by company managements.
(Adhiraj Nayar is a labour rights activist based in Delhi and a student of the labour and Trade Union history of India.)
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