People's Democracy

Globalisation & New Form of Recruitment

Chittabrata Majumdar

RISING unemployment is a perennial problem in all the third world countries like ours. The problem has been aggravated further with the massive downsizing of existing manpower through indiscriminate implementation of exit policies in forms like ‘golden’ handshake, ‘voluntary’ retirement scheme etc during the last one and a half decades of ‘reforms,’ under the plea of making the organisations more efficient and viable. Beyond any doubt the real motto behind such downsizing was malicious and just to shrug the permanent commitment towards the employees to the maximum possible extent so as to maximise the profit. The neo-liberal ‘reform’ in the country has thus prepared the ground in favour of the capitalists, putting the workers on the back foot insofar as their bargaining capacity is concerned --- at least for the time being.

One may note that during the ongoing ‘reform’ process the size of unemployment has been increasing, as the job opportunity has been perpetually lagging compared to the requirement. The closedown of industrial units and the retrenchment of so-called surplus employees have further fuelled the crisis. The millions of job seekers including the educated youth and women are desperate to get a job for their mere survival, irrespective of its quality and conditions, which is nothing but compulsion for the distress sale of labour power. This was exactly the situation the capitalists --- indigenous and foreign --- were masterminding to create. 

While engagement of labour via contractors has been a very common practice since long, the use of various agencies that provide the labour at a much cheaper cost has also proved to be the favourite of the big organisations. Use of agencies popularly known as “third party” in activities of perennial nature to sustain the smooth operation has become a common practice nowadays on part of industrial and business houses, including the multinational companies. In a pre-conceived move, companies have been seeking to replace the permanent workforce by massive deployment of casual labour.

Since such an arrangement is reached between the principal and agencies for supply of labour, there is absence of direct employee employer relationship as per the present frame of labour laws. Thus while the former are the user of labour power, they can conveniently deny the responsibility of adhering to the labour laws of the country. In reality, many of these agencies are nothing but mere cosmetic faces of big business houses, since the latter, in disguise, decide every process --- from selection to deployment. Thus, in true sense, such agencies are satellites of the parent organisations meant to enable the latter to continue and further increase the exploitation of working class clandestinely.

With the patronage of the monopoly capital and multinationals, nowadays these agencies are mushrooming to subserve the capitalist interest. These agencies today supply manual labour as well as engineers, professionals etc to meet the capitalist’s requirements at a low price. They are casuals, without having job permanency, living at the mercy of their true employers, i e the principal. They are denied of right to association for collective bargaining. Violation of the provision of minimum wages along with violation of the laws relating to ESI, bonus, gratuity, provident fund etc, have therefore become the common features. In addition, breach of work rules such as working hours as per the Factories Act and other similar laws has become an unrestricted practice. No additional pay for additional working hours is offered, and workers are kept all the time under the threat of retrenchment. While the violations of labour rights and attacks by employers on workers did take place earlier as well, they are taking place more stridently under the liberalisation process. The lack of adequate legislative supervision to ensure adherence to the existing statutes has made the things all the worse.

The surfeit of unemployed workforce in the country and the mode of the usage of labour via third party have led to increase use of unorganised labour in the organised sector.

The new generation industries, which as “sunrise industries” are the neo-liberals’ favourites, are powerful because of their possession of new technologies. Since their very inception, they have been more vigorously adopting the strategy of deployment of workforce through the same passive route, with the help of the said agencies. Even for the direct engagement of a very insignificant number, employment is offered on strictly contractual basis, where no permanency exists along with the related and other benefits. These contractual appointees are, just like the others, denied of justice in any form. There is hardly any adherence to the labour laws, as is evident from the stretched working hours in almost all enterprises operating in the presently booming IT sector. The units that came into existence as BPO centres have been operating in shifts. The facts reveal that the employers do not bother to adhere to the labour statutes and norms regarding the working time and are conveniently flouting the other stipulations as well. The continuous overworking and unbearable strain of work compel the workers to soon quit on their own.  

This way, by massive downsizing, the Indian bourgeoisie and foreign capital have conspired to suppress the organised labour force and to bulldoze the workers’ collective bargaining strength in order to maximise their own profits through new methods of utilisation of labour. In combination, they are consistently putting all sorts of pressure to compel the government to amend the existing labour laws as well as enact the new sets of statues. The purpose is to extract more and more concessions, to be able to freely launch all sorts of heinous attack on the toiling mass in a bid to fulfil their lust for profit. Nay, with their antagonistic class outlook towards the working class, the pro-liberalisation lobby had moved further to advocate casualisation in government departments and public sector units. 

In this new scenario, the workers have to properly understand the tactic the bourgeoisie have devised to crush the working class, and its impact. In a determined and organised manner, the working class has to come forward and compel the government to devise an efficient machinery to ensure implementation of and adherence to the existing statutes as well as to create a legal framework so as to foil the emerging attacks from capital. This requires broader unity of the working class, which has to evolve a strategy to defend itself and defeat the menace of capitalist onslaught in its neo-liberal forms.