Rohini Hensman - Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism

Workers, Unions,
and
Global Capitalism

LESSONS FROM INDIA

ROHINI HENSMAN

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2011 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-51956-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hensman, Rohini, 1948

Workers, unions and global capitalism : lessons from India / Rohini Hensman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-14800-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-51956-4 (e-book)

1. LaborIndia. 2. Labor movementIndia. 3. GlobalizationEconomic aspects. I. Title.

HD8686.5.H46 2011

331. 880954dc22 2010018408

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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This book started life as a rather unorthodox thesis presented to the University of Amsterdam in 2006: unorthodox because it was based not on one or two years of fieldwork but on more than three decades of research conducted as a participant in the labor movement, mainly but not exclusively in Bombay. I then rewrote it as a book for Columbia University Press, but while the manuscript was waiting for approval, there were many new developments, including the global crisis of 2008. Fortunately, my main argumentthat deglobalization was neither possible nor desirable but that the dominant neoliberal model of globalization was both unjust and unsustainablewas vindicated by the crisis and its aftermath. Hence there was no need to rewrite the main body of the book or to change my conclusions. However, a major update was necessary, and I waited until a year had passed and the situation had settled down somewhat before completing it.

I would like to thank my promoter and supervisor at the University of Amsterdam, Jan Breman, whose guidance, patience, and encouragement ensured that I completed the original thesis, and whose work on informal labor inspired me to take up this issue. My thanks also to Marcel van der Linden, whose guidance was most valuable and whose work on labor internationalism helped me to understand this issue in historical perspective.

Jairus persuaded me to work with unions at a time when I thought of them as bastions of male chauvinism, played a major role in setting up and sustaining the Union Research Group, and bought and borrowed books to help with my research. Without him, this book would not have been possible. Much of the research is in fact a collective endeavor that owes a great deal to other members of the URG: Arun Subramaniam and Ammu Abraham in the early period, Jagdish Parikh, Ram Puniyani, Raju Damle, Ravi Shevade, Sujeet Bhatt, and Jagruti Bhatt; I am especially grateful to Sujata Gothoskar, Chanda Korgaokar, and Apoorva Kaiwar.

Committee members and workers from employees unions have contributed both information and ideas; among them, S. Raghavan (Voltas and Volkart Employees Federation), D. Thankappan (Kamani Employees Union and New Trade Union Initiative), C. C. Mendes, Kamala Karkal and V. A. Nayampally (Pfizer Employees Union), N. Vasudevan (All-India Blue Star Employees Federation, Trade Union Solidarity Committee, and New Trade Union Initiative), R. G. Michael (Abbott Laboratories Employees Union), R. R. Mishra (Philips Workers Union), Kiron Mehta (Philips Employees Union), Bennet DCosta and Franklyn DSouza (Hindustan Lever Employees Union), Suhas Abhyankar (Hindustan Lever Research Centre Employees Union), C. G. Chavan and Dilip Kagal (Nicholas Employees Union), Harish Pujari (Otis Elevator Employees Union), A. W. Noronha (Hoechst Employees Union), and A. Bangera (Siemens Workers Union). I am grateful to all of them, and especially to Thankappan, Vasu, and Bennet, who have shared their wisdom with me on innumerable occasions.

I owe my work on informal workers in the garment industry to Women Working Worldwide, and especially to its founder and former director, Angela Hale; it makes me very sad that she did not live to see the book completed. Others in WWW and the network of groups associated with it contributed a great deal to my understanding of global supply chains and codes of conduct. My thanks to the women garment workers in Bombay who participated in the research, for helping me to see that the biggest obstacle to their getting organized and fighting for better employment conditions was their informality itself; and to Madhavi and Mistrybai for the use of their homes to interview workers and conduct discussions. I would also like to thank Amrita Chhachhi, who has over the years helped me to clarify issues related to women and work and was the first person to suggest that I work on a thesis at all.

I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for providing funding from 1993 to 1994 for my research on employees unions; to WWW for supporting my research on garment workers between 1998 and 2003; and to the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, for providing a CLARA Fellowship in 2001, which enabled me to construct the outlines of my argument.

Finally, I would like to thank Sonia McKay for helpful discussions and material from the Labour Research Department; Sughosh Mazmundar for his generosity in supplying me with books I would not otherwise have been able to obtain; Savi and Vijayatara for stimulating comments; Shaku and Murad for helping me with tracking down references and for their faith in my work; and, last but not least, Amlan and Zinedine for hours of fun while I was working on this book.