Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVII. - Trade unions

Collection:: Economics Books

TRADE UNIONS, 317 with which industries are confronted. In our opinion it would be well if every organisation set up a special committee for the purpose of giving continuous consideration to the improvement of the well-being and the efficiency of the workers in the establishments controlled by its members. Beginnings of Labour Unions. On the labour side, trade unions in India have a short history. Attempts were made as early as the “eighties ” to organise the mill- hands of Bombay in support of proposals for labour legislation, and a Millhands’ Association was formed. But thisdid not survive and, prior to the war, organisation scarcely extended beyond the better paid railway employees and some classes of Government servants. The two or three years following the close of the war saw the formation of a large number of organisations, owing their origin mainly to the grave economic diffi culties of industrial labour. The leading industries were yielding phenomenal profits, but wages lagged behind prices, and labour, so far from participating in the unprecedented prosperity, often found condi- tions harder than before. The world-wide uprising of labour con- sciousness extended to India, where for the first time the mass of industrial workers awoke to their disabilities, particularly in the matter of wages and hours and to the possibility of combination. The effect of this surge was enhanced by political turmoil which added to the prevailing feeling of unrest and assisted to provide willing leaders of a trade union movement. The influence of nationalist politics on the movement had mixed results. It added intensity, but it also tended to increase bitterness and to introducein the minds of many employers a hostile bias against the movement. This, in its turn, tended to obscure the justice of many of the demands made and the fact that the movement was based on genuine and pressing needs. The “¢ Outsider >’ Controversy. During this period, controversy was largely occupied with the question of the outsider, 4.e., the labour leader drawn from outside the ranks of labour. Employers frequently announced their readiness to treat with unions led by their own workmen, but refused to recognise any outsiders. This claim had some support in the attitude of Govern- ment prior to 1920 towards unions of their own servants ; but the official position had been defined with a view to the pre-war organisations which catered mainly for the upper ranks of Government service, and in 1920 the Government of India conceded the principle of the right to employ outsiders. In many cases the objection to outsiders was in essence objection to particular individuals, e.g., dismissed employees or politi cians. At a later date the legislative recognition of the right of registered unions to employ such persons and to include them in their executive, did much to diminish these objections. Controversy between employers and trade unions, though it has not concluded on this question, has tended latterly to become centred on another matter, namely, that of recognition. We shall revert to both these questions later.

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