The Hindu Business Line : Trade union power wearing thin

DEUNIONISATION that has set in the traditional textile belt of Coimbatore in recent years has proved to be a formidable challenge for established workers trade unions in making their voice heard on issues of collective bargaining with mill managements.

The changes that have occurred in the fortunes of the organised textile industries and gradual replacement of permanent workforce employed in the mills with contract labour deployed of late in full strength have expedited the process of deunionisation of mill workers, trade union sources said.

The sorry state of affairs in which the most established trade unions find themselves, the sources said, was after all not the creation of the workers or their unions but the drooping fortunes of the organised textile mills and deteriorating financial health caused by the structural changes and in most cases mismanagement by the promoters themselves, they say.

"In the best of times, say in early 1990s, the unionised workforce's strength in the organised textile mills in Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and Udumalpet used to be anywhere around 1.5 lakh but today, the total number of workers under trade union affiliation are just one-fourth of that number or even less," admitted Mr Rajamani, State secretary of the HMS and President of the HMS Coimbatore district textile workers union.

The failed textile units and large-scale closure of mills apart, the systematic deployment of casual labourers especially women workers on low wages had hit the fall in the membership of every traditional workers union in the region. According to the HMS leader, the strength of the casual/contract workers on daily wage basis has gone up to 60-70 per cent of the total

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