THINNING VANGUARD OF WORKERS
BY JAGJIT SINGH
A trade union is in essence a continuous organisation of employees
established for the purpose of protecting or improving , through collective action, the economic and social status of its members- thus described Clyde E. Dankert the role and importance of unions, in his book "Contemporary Unionism".
Undeniably, trade unions in the world, which are often termed a cornerstone of any effective system of
industrial relations, have played, Since industrial revolution, a crucial role in protecting and promoting workers’ interests. Whether it was a question of securing better wages and accident-related compensation, or improved working conditions or resisting the anti-worker economic or industrial policies/programmes of the respective regimes or industrial establishments, trade unions fought successfully for workers’ rights, without succumbing to any tactical pressures or inducements.
In the past they have acted as agents for labour, organizing large number of workers into a single entity whose collective bargaining power matches that of the employer. A cohesive and well-organized trade union has the potential to increase workplace productivity and reduce discrimination. By balancing power relationships between workers and managers, unions limit employer behavior that is sometimes arbitrary, exploitative or retaliatory. Germany has had powerful labour unions and its tripartite system of consultation and decision-making involving employers, worker's representatives and government have given the country almost the highest wages and the shortest working time of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
Unfortunately, trade union membership has been falling in most industrial countries in recent years. In the Netherlands, memberships in unions fell from 39 per cent in 1978 to 24 per cent in 1991. Similarly, the United States witnessed a three-decade slide in union membership from 30 per cent to about 15 per cent.
A smaller proportion of the
workforce in the third world countries tends to be unionized. The reason is that there are not many workers in the formal sector. In Latin America, nearly 20 per cent of the total workforce is unionized. Especially in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, the number of workers covered by trade unions is high. In the Asian region, Singapore and Sri Lanka have some of the highest rates of the unionized workers where up to 40 per cent of the workers are affiliated to some union or the other. On the contrary, Malaysia and Philippines, the membership level is between 20 per cent and 40 per cent. In Africa’s formal sector, only 10 per cent of the workforce is unionized which constitutes only one or two per cent of the total working population of that region. Trade union situation is the worst in many of the Arab countries. In Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, trade unions are banned
Trade unions in the industrialized countries have been undermined from different directions. Growing unemployment has considerably reduced the number of workers and strengthened the hands of employers. On top of that, trade unions have faced much tougher and stricter laws enacted by their respective governments. Furthermore, employers have shifted from countries with powerful trade unions to low-wage non-unionized countries, thus jeopardizing the job prospects of a large number of workers. In this already dismal scenario, a more fundamental problem is the fragmentation of the labour force, which is now much more resistant to mass organization. The shift to services and growing numbers of part-time workers, or those adopting flexible working patterns, puts them beyond the reach of traditional methods of organization.
The world trade unions are today faced with the basic problem of shift in the nature of workforce. The World Labour Report produced by the International Labour Organizatin (ILO), points out in its 1993 survey of trade unions: “Working life today is very different from that in the old smoke-stack industries where trade union solidarity was originally forged. Today’s workers in manufacturing are more likely to be operating complex equipment, often using computers and robots and developing skills which blur the traditional dividing lines between blue-collar and white.”
Any discussion on trade unions will be incomplete without a reference to women workers who constitute, in many sectors, more than 50 per cent of the workforce. Despite this, trade unions in many countries continue to be dominated by males. Even in the largest international trade union organization, the International Confederation of Free Trade Union, only 34 per cent of the members were women, as per a UNDP report of 1993. The report also points out that in Latin America only three per cent of the trade union officials were women. Since many of the newer women entrants to the workforce are working part-time or in complex shift patterns, it makes them especially difficult to organize.
In the rapidly changing economic and industrial scenario, if the trade unions want to remain in the forefront of participation in workplace, they will have to reinvent themselves in order to represent a new generation of workers and safeguard their interests.
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