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10/23/2007.... India - a new frontier for growing unions
- Labour news from UNI global union - for trade unions in a global services economy. -
Philip Jennings
ITPF Coffee Break |  | “We are making progress on a new frontier for organising trade unions,” said UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings after the first day of the UNI World Executive’s historic visit to India.
UNICOME - the UNI-backed union for commerce workers - held its inaugural conference and telecom delegates discussed plans to organise workers in the private mobile phone companies in the world’s most populous country.
Security guards reviewed progress in their campaign to win recognition in companies like Group 4 Securicor, which has 100,000 employees in India’s fast growing security sector, and the IT Professional Forum held a seminar to look at the changing face of outsourcing. And it was announced that a Mumbai branch of UNITES - the UNI backed union for call and back off processing centres - is likely to be up and running by the end of the year.
World Executive members joined members from the sectors in the run up to the first ever Executive meeting in India, scheduled for Thursday and Friday. |
It was the Executive that authorised a substantial investment in India to grow unions in an economy that is both fast growing and increasingly global.
“Service workers are now in the front line of globalisation and it’s UNI’s mission to ensure that there are strong trade unions everywhere,” said Philip. “We are working on the ground in 60 countries around the world to help grow unions.”
UNI’s strategy includes working with existing unions - there are 27 Indian affiliates with nearly a million members - and helping to build new unions in the expanding private sector.
Unions have a strong presence in the state telecom operator BSNL for instance but there is no effective organisation in the new, private mobile companies like Vodafone (which recently bought Indian operator Hutch).
The commerce sector is largely small scale and outside the formal economy but there has been a recent flurry of announcements from Indian conglomerates on building retail chains in the cities while multinationals like Wal-Mart and Tesco have their eyes on India’s 300 million strong middle class.
“The retail industry in India is going to develop rapidly in the formal sector in the years ahead and multinationals are anxiously looking at how they can penetrate the Indian retail sector,” said UNI-Pacific President Joe de Bruyn.
UNICOME's first conference
Security guards meeting in Delhi | | Staff in the new shopping malls that cater for India’s new affluent citizens are often paid below minimum wages, have little job security and are required to work long hours.
“We are here to learn, to understand and to see how we can help you build a strong commerce union in India,” UNI Commerce President and World Executive member Alan Spaulding told delegates. The UNICOME conference also heard of problems with conditions and unionising in the Metro Cash and Carry in Bangalore culminating in dismissals of union activists that are currently the subject of labour court proceedings.
“You are very courageous,” Philip Jennings told Shivraju after he had detailed his sacking to the conference and told of efforts by the local management to get members to quit the union with inducements of better jobs and more pay. |
“This would never happen in Germany (Metro’s home base),” said Philip who promised assistance from UNI and commerce affiliates to resolve problems in Bangalore. Metro has a group statement supporting labour rights.
India’s IT industry may grab the headlines but security is the fastest growing area of employment in India. “We need strong and well organised unions in security that can negotiate a good collective agreement for guards,” Philip told a group from the Indian Security Workers Organising Initiative which involves UNI, guards affiliates and two of India’s trade union centres.
Many security workers in India are on very low pay, work long hours and often have to work through sub-contractors with no job security These are among the working poor in a country that has 40% of the world’s poorest people.
“We have two narratives in India running side by side - of poverty and of growing wealth,” Philip told the ITPF seminar.
A middle class of 300 million today lives in the same country as 250 million people on a dollar a day or less. India is also the youngest country in the world with half its population of a billion people under the age of 20.
Earlier this year UNI, SETCa and the ITPF signed an agreement on backing for the Forum movement, which has around 6,500 members in six chapters and nine Indian states.
“We have to bring together all our capacities to build strong unions worldwide,” said SETCa President Erwin de Deyn.
The IT industry grew fast with a lot of work outsourced from the United States and Europe but increasingly Indian companies in IT (and other sectors) are establishing themselves overseas.
“UNI is committed to the development of our work to ensure that there are organisations for working people - we see nothing inconsistent in being a professional and being a member of an organisation that brings professionals together,” said Philip.
“There is a need for IT professionals to link with one another, to be aware of the need to update their skills and to lobby governments and establish dialogue with companies.”
He identified monitoring, working hours and high rates of staff turnover among the key issues in Indian IT centres. “These require a dialogue that requires the government to think about and the companies to think about.”
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UNi-Asia & Pacific (UNI-Apro)
http://www.uni-apro.org - uni-asiapacific@union-network.org |