The Hindu Business Line : The significance of May Day

Last week’s May Day celebrations in Kerala highlighted the need to raise labour productivity to match the increases in wage and non-wage benefits that the State’s organised labour has enjoyed for a long time.

Last Friday was a particularly significant one for the millions of people around the word who toil with their hands to put bread on the table for their families. In most countries of the world, the first day of May — May Day or the International Workers’ Day — celebrates the social and economic achievements of the international labour movement, and, according to the International Labour Organizations (ILO), commemorates a time of civil unrest in the late 19th century when workers in industrialised countries demonstrated for improved working conditions, wage raises and the establishment of a maximum working day and week.

May Day is also the commemoration of the Haymarket Square Massacre in Chicago on May 4, 1886, when Chicago police fired on protesting workers who were out on the streets in a general strike demanding the implementation of an eight-hour working day. In the firing, a dozen demonstrators were killed. Their blood and sacrifice have since then been remembered every May Day by countless workers in the far-flung corners of the industrialised and industrialising world.

And never as vociferously and passionately as in Kerala, the southwestern State of India, which has been witness to a hoary tradition of working class struggles for minimum wages and better working conditions. This time around, the ceremonies were tinged with a certain degree of anxiety and uncertainty. The global economic and financial crisis that has gripped the world in a seemingly deathly embrace has not spared Kerala. As a State that has long nurtured ties with the outside world through trade and outflow of migrant labour, Kerala is feeling the pains of the global economic contraction, as jobs in the Middle East dry up and remittances from expatriate Malayalees slow to a trickle.

They are certainly not alone. In France, thousands of people took to the streets on May Day, berating the government for failing to provide security of employment during a crisis that is not of the workers’ making. With unemployment in France set to hit 10 per cent by next year and with another 70,000 people joining the ranks of the jobless last month alone, it is clear why French workers are so bitter.

Even in revolutionary socialist Cuba, the picture is as bleak. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans thronged the Revolution Plaza for another May Day parade in an official demonstration of worker power. But with wages remaining low (the average monthly salary for most State workers is about $20) and prices continuing to soar, Cuban workers are as worried as their comrades elsewhere.

And many of them are in Kerala, which accounts for around 3 per cent of the total main workforce of India. According to the 2001 Census, the State’s population was 3.18 crores, and 63.4 per cent of the population was in the age group of 15-59, which constitutes the labour force. According to the State Planning Board, the projected labour force of Kerala for 2011 is 237.30 lakhs. Out of the country’s total main workers, 2.6 per cent are Keralites.

Kerala has 102.91 lakhs workers (main and marginal), of whom 16.54 lakhs are agricultural labourers and 3.65 lakhs are in household industries. Net out-migration of labour to other parts of India and abroad and the resulting inflow of remittances into the State is a particularly notable phenomenon. Some studies have estimated the amount of remittances from the Middle East region alone as high as 22 per cent of the State’s net domestic product.

According to the State Planning Board’s Economic Review 2008, Kerala’s labour community mainly consists of those who are engaged in the informal sector (loading and unloading, casual work, construction work, brick making, self-employment, etc,), traditional industries (coir, cashew, handloom, beedi, etc.), manufacturing sector (small, medium and large industries), the information technology industry, units in export promotion zones and those who are seasonally employed. The work participation rate for men and women according to the 2001 Census was 50.40 and 15.30, respectively.

The long history of Kerala’s working class struggles through the process of unionisation began in the early 1930s. According to economist K.P. Kannan of the Centre for Development Studies, the early phases of the labour movement in Kerala did not distinguish between urban and rural workers, informal and formal sectors, men and women, primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. “This is a remarkable achievement as it gave the workers, especially in rural areas, a distinct identity of their own as part of collective organisations. The ability of labour unions to exercise considerable bargaining power was directly related to the political process in which pro-labour governments came to power from time to time,” writes Kannan, in his paper, “Political Economy of Labour and Development in Kerala: Some Reflections on the Dilemmas of a Socially Transforming Labour Force in a Slow Growing Economy”.

These governments were forced to introduce pro-labour legislation. There are now 30 labour laws administered by the State Labour Department, and 79 categories of employments have been covered by the Minimum Wages Act 1948. The First and the Second National Commissions on Labour have regarded the Industrial Relations Committees (IRCs) functioning in the State as Joint Consultative bodies as an outstanding contribution of Kerala to the country. Although the decisions/settlements of IRCS are not enforceable by law, they are considered as a general agreement applicable for the State as a whole.

The origin of the IRCs can be traced to the coir industry in the early 1940s. Today, there are about 14 IRCs, which work to prevent or resolve disputes in the traditional labour sector, including plantations. One unique feature of Kerala’s IRCs has been the formulation of mutually and amicably agreed formulae to settle industrial disputes on issues like wage bonus. As far back as 1944, Kerala recorded the settlement of ‘minimum bonus’, irrespective of profit or loss, in the plantation industry.

However, as Kannan points out, there is a flip side to these achievements. “Better conditions of work and increased wages for labour meant an increase in wage costs for employers. This threatened to reduce the share of profits in the value added for the employers. From a dynamic point of view, empirical evidence so far suggests that the rate of growth in product wages was higher than the rate of growth in labour productivity since the mid-1970s,” he writes.

Clearly, as the excitement and elation of the May Day celebrations fade, Kerala’s workers would do well to ponder over this issue – how to raise labour productivity to match the increases in wage and non-wage benefits that they have enjoyed for a long time.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com

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