Industrial relations cordial last year: Survey

The industrial relations in the country were ‘peaceful' and ‘cordial' during the last year, said the Economic Survey. The survey dismissed the popular perception that relations between workers and employers had deteriorated during the last year.

The survey said the number of strikes and lockouts had shown a substantial fall during a large part of 2011. According to the survey, there were 106 strikes reported till October 2011, against 262 reported for the whole of last year. The instances of lockouts also registered a significant fall from 165 in 2010 to 29 up to October 2011. Total mandays lost also saw a steep fall, down from 1.8 crore in 2010 to 41 lakh in October 2011. The survey credited the "constant endeavour of industrial relations machineries of both the Centre and the state" as being behind better industrial relations.

 

The survey said issues of dispute over wages and allowance, bonus, personnel, indiscipline and violence, and financial stringency were major reasons for these strikes and lockouts. However, the survey didn't raise the issue of contract labour as a source of disagreement between employers and employees.

Last year strikes, which disrupted work in over a dozen industrial units, saw the dominance of lack of parity between contract and permanent workers at the forefront of dispute between workers and employers. The three strikes at India's largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki's Manesar plant was also on the issue of dissatisfaction among the contract workers. Among the other prominent strikes was the eight-day strike at Mahindra and Mahindra's Nashik plant over the demand of "equal pay for equal work" and a three-month strike at Dr Reddy's Laboratories' API manufacturing facility near Visakhapatnam over disagreement over pay to contract workers.

Both the industry and the trade union leaders dismissed the Economic Survey's claim that the industrial relations in the country were "cordial". They said last year and more recently the general strike on February 28 had reinforced that the industrial climate in the country was on the decline.

"The industrial relations in the country are hardly cordial," said Federation of Indian Chambers and Commerce's BP Pant. "Saying industrial relations are cordial is a blatant lie," said All India Trade Union Congress' General Secretary Gurudas Dasgupta.

Construction sector leads in employment

Driving the point of a relationship existing between economic reform and employment growth, the Economic Survey said there was a substantial increase in employment opportunities in the industrial sector. A majority of these additional jobs were created in the construction sector. According to the survey, in 2009-10 the construction workers employed 9.6% of the workforce, while it contributed 7.9% to the GDP. Mining sector also witnessed an increase in employment. However, manufacturing whose share of contribution to the GDP increased from 15.3% in 2004-05 to 16% in 2009-10, saw a fall in employment. Employment in manufacturing decreased from 56.1 million in 2004-05 to 52.4 million in 2009-10.

 

Year	Strikes	Lockouts	Total mandays lost
2006	243	187	20,324,378
2007	210	179	27,166,752
2008 (P)	240	181	17,433,721
2009 (P)	205	187	13,364,757
2010 (P)	262	165	18,025,733
2011 (P) (Jan-Oct)	106	29	4,194,651