The Hindu Business Line : Strikes down, but workforce participation goes up

THE pre-Budget Economic Surveys that are released each year have for many years now been telling us that `there has been an improvement in the industrial relations in the country in the nineties, as compared to the eighties. The number of strikes in 1998 was lower than that in 1997' (Economic Survey 1999/2000).

Or that `there was a sharp decline in the number of strikes and lockouts during 2003 as compared to the previous year.

The reduction in strikes and lockouts was more prominent in the public sector' (Economic Survey 2003/2004). There is no doubt that the nineties saw fewer, less intense and less widespread breakdowns in industrial relations as compared to the eighties, and even more so as compared with the seventies.

Similarly, it is true that the improvement has been more marked in the public sector thanks to the twin policies of (i) letting the workforce dwindle by attrition, by keeping fresh recruitment below the number of retirees each year, and (ii) the use of voluntary retirement schemes to weed out surplus manpower.

Data released by the Labour Bureau of the Government of India, however, presents a more mixed picture than the Economic Surveys.

Corroborating the statements one finds in the Economic Surveys, Labour Bureau data shows that the number of strikes in 2001, 2002,2003 and 2004 (January to November) totalled 372, 295, 255and 218 respectively. However, so far as the number of mandays lost is concerned, no clear trend is visible for the first four years of the 21st century. Millions of mandays lost on account of strikes added up to 5.6,9.7, 3.2 and 3.7 in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 (January to November) respectively.

Celebrations over the decline of strikes therefore need to be held somewhat in check on account of the absence of a clear trend in mandays lost.

If to these two parameters, one adds a third, on the number of workers participating in strikes, an even more sobering picture emerges.

Less than half a million workers participated in strikes in 2001. The figure rose steadily thereafter to 900 thousand in 2002, 1 million in 2003, and 1.6 million between January and November 2004.

Hopefully, the forthcoming Survey will offer some striking or at least insightful comments on the curious discrepancies between the three measures of change in industrial relations mentioned above.

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