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. 319 gained in the eyes of the public and of employers, and even unregistered unions have benefited from the greater confidence given to the movement as a whole. Up to the end of 1929, 87 unions were registered, with 183,000 members ; these are a minority of the existing unions. but, in- clude the majoritv of the vigorous organisations. © Internal Difficulties. In recent years trade unionism has bad to face internal difficult- ies. For some time efforts have been made by communistsin India and from beyond its border to capture the movement. These met with their greatest success in Bombay in 1928. The absence of any strong organi- sation among the cotton mill workers and a realisation of their weak- ness, combined with the encouragement given by the result of a pro- longed strike, enabled a few of the communist leaders, by an intense effort to capture the imagination of the workers and eventually to sweep over 50,000 of them into a communist organisation. One effect of these strikes, and particularly the last disastrous strike, has been to render difficult the development of effective trade union organisation during the next few years. The workers, discouraged and depressed, are divided and many of them are still imbued with communist beliefs and ideals. These fact- ors stand in the way of the creation of an effective organisation with which the employers’ association can negotiate. Until this obstacle is removed, better understanding and relationship with the workpeople is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of attainment. At the same period renewed political excitement throughout the country led to the appearance of leaders whose interests were mainly political. The diver- gence of views among the leaders had been increasingly apparent in the All-India Trade Union Congress and this culminated in a split at the end of 1929. Dissensions regarding communism led to the secession of the majority of the unions under their more experienced and responsible leaders and the formation by them of the All-India Trade Union Federa- tion. The position of the trade union movement as a whole is still unstable, and much will depend on its course of development in the next few vears. Types of Unions, A fair assessment of the strength of the movement at the present time is difficult, mainly because unions vary so greatly in form and character. This will be best realised from a brief review of the main types. At the bottom of the scale come those “ unions ” which represent little or nothing more than the one or two men (generally drawn from the professional classes) who fill the leading offices. A few such unions can fairly be described as having had their main evidence of reality in notepaper headings. The object is to give a platform and a name to the leaders. The members, if not imaginary, are convened on the rare occasions when the endorsement of some resolution is required. This type of valueless growth, which is more characteristic of Bengal than of other provinces and is becoming rare even there, was stimulated by the belief that it would assist the leaders to secure nomination in the labour interest to local councils or international labour conferences

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