Sujata Gothoskar at the AMRC 30th Anniversary Conference


The labour movements have been facing serious challenges over the last decades. And so have most other movements for radical social change. These are movements that have challenged the status quo, the structures, systems and the powers-that-be in different ways. 
 

The status quo, the structures, systems and the powers-that-be have changed and have specific historical contexts. Different eras are marked by a combination of relationships of dominance, oppression and exploitation, which in turn are resisted and organized against in different ways at different phases.

The earlier part of the 20th century was dominated by anti-colonial struggles. That was the larger context. That does not mean that in the entire canvass, there was no space for other struggles. The labour movements were jostling for space along side, within and sometimes in opposition to the anti-colonial struggles; similarly, the women’s movements were also taking place, as well as the dalit movements in India, the anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa and various other movements in other countries.

The labour movements were powerful contenders for space within the larger movement for change, questioning the dominance of capital and the status quo.

Most movements are a response to the experiences and analysis of dominance and power. There is an identification of relationships, a gradual evolution of principles, the gearing up of the movement and mobilization around the movement. This often leads to building of structures and mechanisms, a revisiting or concretization of principles and practices of these. This often goes parallel to coming into contact with other movements, building relationships with these movements, often a conflict or assimilation of the challenges raised by these movements. This would lead to a new configuration and so on. Since we are talking about live movements, these processes are often on-going, not linear in progression, and lead to changes and adaptation to or reactions to changes in the environment, including the economy.

Some of the movements that have evolved in the last few decades and have impacted upon each other are:

These movements cover an entire spectrum and would need a much longer time to discuss. Here I would look at a few challenges that these movements have posed to each other and the new challenges being posed to some of these movements due to the changes in the political economy in the current phase of capitalist globalization.

As a feminist women’s rights activist active in the labour movement for several years now, one of the roles I played or thought I played in the organizations I worked with was a role a great many women in my generation have played: That of raising so-called women’s issues in the labour movement and of raising class issues in the women’s movement. I am not so sure whether those of us who played that role were successful or not, but some of us could not have played any other role.

I had thought: ‘Oh that was the 1970s and 1980s. Things have changed.’ But more recently, when I meet some of my young friends, they have a similar role chalked out for themselves, albeit with a difference some of them have had to raise queer issues in the women’s movement and class issues in the queer movement.

The issues of democratic rights and democratic structures have had to be raised in almost every movement, often with a great deal of heart-burn, pain and struggle.

One issue that has rocked and often split the women’s movements has in fact been that of sexuality and sexual morality. This has happened at a global level.

Those very women who struggled and vehemently argued the political issue of inclusion of women and their right to represent themselves, have often had conferences on sex work while excluding sex workers. More recently, when bar dancing was banned by the State of Maharashtra in India, the State Women’s Commission and some of the women’s organizations came together to discuss the issue of ‘rehabilitation’ – without calling either the bar dancers or their union. And when the union activists and the bar dancers turned up for the meeting, they were told to keep quiet – which of course they did not!

The issues here are several. One that most of the movements have not been able to look at and discuss is the issue of ‘sexual morality’. Secondly, the differences, similarities and hierarchies between manual labour, intellectual labour and sexual labour have not been analyzed and discussed in most of the movements adequately, whether in the labour movements or the women’s movements. Hence, in several countries, at least definitely in several Asian countries, sexual branding is a sure way of discrediting and de-mobilizing women activists.

Another related reason for the divisiveness of the sexuality issue is that women’s movements in several countries presented women as victims. While women were and still are often the victims of sexual and other violence, women as active social beings also making their own choices in however limited a context, is something that was not emphasized. Giving a mere victim status to women possibly was a way to gather social sympathy at a time when the women’s movement was in its infancy. Hence anything that is perceived as ‘not being good for women’, by a conservative view, is something that has been forced on women and women could not have been involved in by their own ‘choice’. A more dialectical view of women’s life situation is needed if one does not want to infantalize women. 
     

An encouraging development in this field is the unionization of and organizing by sex workers in almost every country in the world. Some countries have several unions and organizations, some others have a few with a relatively large membership. These unions and organizations have come up over the last twenty or thirty years and are the product of several parallel and independent processes. Some of these processes include the contradictory impact of the positions taken by the women’s movement, the openness shown by sections of the labour movements, and the entire HIV/AIDS movement, to name a few.  

The issue of hetero-normativity and of compulsory hetero-sexuality are also ones that have not been raised except by the queer movements. These are relatively new issues being raised. These are often looked at as divisive or as issues alien to the cultural milieu of Asian communities. However, these are issues that deepen the understanding of the status quo and the struggle against it, as hetero-normativity and compulsory hetero-sexuality are as much part of the power structure and the ideological baggage as patriarchy and domination by capital.

Other new issues seem to be confronting the labour movements due to the changes in the political economy as well. I shall just name a few that are most stark.

The trade union has been the most lasting organizational structure and institution defending the rights of workers. It has at times brought an alternative vision in terms of the power relationships in society; yet, precisely because trade unions have been around for a long time­­­ – for much more than a century­ – this often means that as a structure and as an institution, it is likely that trade unions retain the ethos and practices of earlier epochs that make them moribund institutions with constraints, inertia and an aversion to experiment with newer forms of structures and struggles.

It is common experience and knowledge now that there are several sectors of work where women workers constitute the majority. However, until recently, the trade union leadership of even these sectors was largely male, whether they were the nursing staff or the teaching profession. Especially in South Asia, it is men who have dominated large sectors of work and taken disproportionately large roles in terms of leadership in unions. This situation is gradually changing, with women taking over leadership in several sectors, at least where women workers are in the majority. The struggles and unionization of aanganwadi workers – child-carers in government programmes – of domestic workers, of street vendors, and of bar dancers, are a few of the more recent developments. Women activists, most of them from the most disadvantaged sections, have played a leading role in several of these struggles and movements, especially those against displacement and land alienation, in almost every state in a country like India. Whether it is aadivasi women in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and many other States of India organizing and struggling against a definition of development that denies them basic human rights and validates corporate greed, or dalit women defying age-old practices of work and life norms. Women have also played a very critical and important role in the recent democracy movement in Nepal, for example, as well as in on-going movements for democratic and human rights in the northeastern states in India. Women, individually and collectively, have devised newer forms and strategies of struggle, that awaken people to the extreme forms of brutality and oppression they are subject to. These newer forms are important from the point of view of the global movement for radical social change, as newer forms of threats to democracy and dignity of people are being devised everyday and these need to be countered with information and imagination.    

This has happened much less, however, in more formal trade union structures. How these constraints and this inertia can be challenged, how newer sections of workers may be included, how newer issues may be addressed—these are key to the sustainability and relevance, nay, the very survival, of the trade union movement itself. 

At one level, trade unions are and have to be combat organizations, organizations that fight corporate greed and defend workers’ rights. At another level, this ‘combativity’ has to take on newer and more inclusive and imaginative forms if it is to be effective. This is all the more true as the transnational corporations directly or indirectly impact many more workers today than before, and this trend is likely to increase even further as it encompasses not just manufacturing, but also agriculture and a wide range of services, including retail trade.     

One example of this challenge is the entire obfuscation of the category of ‘employer’. Who is the employer? Who do we bargain with? This is an ever unfolding phenomenon. One of the latest on the screen is the phenomenon of private equity buyouts. In just five years, private equity buyouts have established themselves as major short-term owners of companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers around the world. In the year 2006 alone private equity funds spent over US$ 725 billion buying out companies, an amount equivalent to buying the national economies of the Netherlands, or of Argentina, Poland and South Africa combined, with billions of dollars to spare.

One of the crucial issues in private equity buyouts is that under most national laws they are not treated as a change in ownership affecting industrial relations. European Union regulations also fail to recognize and enforce employer responsibility in this regard. The EU Acquired Rights Directive, which is intended to ensure continuity of employment terms and conditions in the event of a takeover, does not apply in the event of a wholesale transfer of share ownership. This has far-reaching consequences for unions, since the absence of any legal recognition of a change in ownership allows private equity firms to evade responsibility as an employer in the collective bargaining process. There were strike actions on this issue in Europe in the year 2005.  

Another major challenge is the phenomenon of financialization of capital. Taking this issue up would mean fighting one set of management in order to retain the sustainability of the industry, rather than merely the traditional concept of workers’ rights.

Another area where unions are beginning to design strategies is the question of the labour market and intervention within it. Training workers and their children to be effective in the current context of the labour market is one strategy that is being debated and tried out.

The changing nature of global capital takes on other hues as well. According to a study by Goldman Sachs International that was presented at the UN headquarters a few weeks ago, ‘one in every three of the world’s 20 biggest energy companies now come from the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). That compares with the situation 15 years ago when all of the 20 came from Europe and the US.’ According to the study, this tendency will `spread from sector to sector’. The growing power of the BRICs is most evident in metallurgy and the coal industry and is beginning to be felt in the insurance and consumer sector. The study found that, in 1991, 55% of the 20 biggest companies by market capitalization were based in the US and 45% of them came from the European countries. But in 2007 as many as 35% of the top 20 were from the BRIC countries, while 35% were from European countries and only 30% were from the US. These trends have grave implications for the labour movement and the entire ramifications of these trends need to be understood.

Another trend that the trade union and labour movement has to seriously consider is the issue of migration. There has been a tremendous increase in migration in the last few decades. According to a BBC series: ‘Over the past 15 years, the number of people crossing borders in search of a better life has been rising steadily. At the start of the 21st century, one in every 35 people is an international migrant. If they all lived in the same place, it would be the world’s fifth-largest country.’ The issue of women migrant workers is another major area of concern for the global trade union movement. Ninety million women are said to be currently residing outside their countries of origin and according to the report ‘Global migration trends for women: A review of the latest United Nations World Survey on the Role of Women in Development’, it is not the presence of women in migration streams that is unusual, but the scale of the migration and the entry of women into previously male migration streams that is notable. Women’s representation among all international migrants has risen from 46 percent in 1960 to 49 percent in 2000. This would have risen further in the last few years. 

A very large part of this workforce is not represented in trade unions. In fact, the politics of migration and the issue of globalization of labour has been one reason for mistrust between trade unions in the ‘developed’ world and those in the ‘developing’ world. Together with a struggle against globalized capital, trade unions would seriously need to discuss strategies for globalized labour.

This brings us to the issue of nationalism within the trade union movement. Today, more than ever before, internationalization of the trade union movement makes sense. What has been the record of trade unions in this regard? The entire discussion around what may be called ‘the social clause’ debate had serious strands of ‘national interests’, and this needs to be discussed and debated further. 

The role of the State has several aspects and these have not been unraveled, nor have more complex strategies been evolved. At one level is the polarization of wealth in every part of the globe – between countries and within countries as well. The number and proportion of the working poor have increased over the last few decades. This means that more and more people in every part of the world is deprived of adequate food, potable water, housing, health and educational and other opportunities. The State everywhere has failed to provide for its citizens, while increasing its repressive functions. This has often meant that the most vulnerable sections of the society are confronted with no security whatsoever – social, political or economic. The last decades have seen active racial profiling or participation in sectarian violence by the dominant State. All social movements have insisted on the responsibility of the State towards its citizens. However, it is urgent that concrete strategies are developed whereby this vision is concretized and actualized. There are several instances whereby this is being done by different movements. For example, when the Gujarat carnage (of unprecedented ethnic violence against Muslim communities in Gujarat, especially on the women) happened in 2002 in India, the women’s movement was very active at different levels, including at the international level, when an International Initiatives for Justice in Gujarat was an active campaign taken up for several years. The trade union movement also participated in opposing the State. This has been followed up by several organizations and movements participating actively in the formulation of an Act that deals with sectarian violence.   

These are a few of the challenges that have come up in the last few decades. There are many more that exist and many, many more that will come up on the horizon. It is not possible to discuss them all in such a short time. Whether it is the question of peace movement or the environment movement, different movements have begun to see the close links these movements have to the lives and livelihoods of the people in the most vulnerable sections in society and their struggle to live a life of dignity.

Different movements are gearing themselves to some of these challenges. Trade unions and other organizations seem to be coming up within sections of the workforce that were almost completely unorganized, whether it is domestic workers, construction workers, street vendors or sex workers. This is a welcome trend. However, every new trend raises several issues, including contradictions for all the existing movements and organizations. Openness and readiness to face up to those and to confront those challenges seem to be the need of the hour.