Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVII. - Trade unions

Collection:: Economics Books

320 CHAPTER XVII, On a higher level come what may be described as the ad hoe unions, 7.e., organisations designed to secure some definite and immediate object. These, though they may be organised by independent persons, have their origin in the genuine need of the workers. The most common form is the strike committee, formed to carry on a strike and sometimes charged with the responsibility of formulating demands after the strike has begun. With the end of the dispute, particularly if the workers are unsuccessful, the “union” either disappears or enters a state of suspend- ed animation, from which it may be revived by a subsequent dispute. Unions of this type are frequently able to claim a very large membership for the time being, and they can be of distinct service to their members. But they do little in the way of educating their membership in trade unionism and may even create obstacles in the way of genuine trade unions. The majority of labour unions are now permanent and regular organisations. Transport is perhaps the best organised section of in- dustry ; the railway workers and seamen support a number of live unions, and dock workers have generally some organisation. Combination is fairly general among Government employees ; the stronger unions here are mainly those constituted of persons outside the ranks of labour, but there are unions of some strength within these ranks. Printers, with their educa- tional advantages and more settled conditions, find the formation of unions easy, but hitherto these have not proved very effective, being strongest in Government presses and weakest where the need is greatest. On the whole, the textile workers have been slow to organise. Up to 1926 there was no effective organisation of the cotton mill workers in Bombay, and even now very few of the jute mill workers in Bengal can be regarded as regularly organised. In Madras, on the other hand, the cotton mills, where organisation began, have remained as a focus of trade union acti- vity. In Ahmedabad, the workers, excluding the Musalman weavers, are organised in a group of craft unions which, participating in a common central federation, have a strength and cohesion probably greater than those of any other labour unions. This may have some connection with the survival, until a comparatively late date, of a strong guild tradition in Ahmedabad. This lateral method of organisation is comparatively rare in India, where the tendency has been to organise vertically, i.e., by industrial establishments. Even where more than one union is formed in the same industry and the same centre, the division is generally by factories and not by occupations. Mining workers are poorly organised in every field, and in the plantations genuine organisa- tion on the labour side is quite unknown. Measured geographically, trade unionism is strongest in Bombay Presidency, and weakest (having regard to the potentialities) in Bengal. Numerical Strength. As the foregoing remarks indicate, an accurate numerical esti- mate of the strength of trade unionism is almost impossible. In Bombay the Labour Office recorded the existence of 93 unions claiming 120,000 members in September 1930, but this includes some unions which do not eater for industrial workers. For the rest of India no

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