Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 23, 2002
Our comrades who oppose labour law
reforms in India, purposely don't tell their followers how "anti-labour"
are the labour laws in communist havens like China and North Korea. Just
go through the Beijing government's official publication, Labour Law of
the People's Republic of China.
Not a word in the document gives
the workers of the communist paradise "the right to strike" -- though Article
3 grants them equality and choice of occupations, etc. Security of job
or the right to participate in management are nowhere mentioned. Trade
Unions are allowed under Article 7, only for the purpose of negotiating
employment terms with employing units. The only stipulation is that wages
should not be below minimum -- a law equivalent to our own Minimum Wages
Legislation.
This offers a sharp contrast to
the labour laws in most democracies, including India, where labour has
the right to strike work. It is interesting to observe that while in our
Industrial Disputes Act, a worker can be sacked only if he has committed
a verifiable breach of discipline (details of which are laid down) Chinese
legislation is inclement.
On termination of job, the Chinese
law only states that, "a written notification shall be given to the labourer
30 days in advance". Such vague provisions as "a worker found to be seriously
violating labour discipline or rules and regulations of the employing unit",
or even being a mere subject of criminal investigations, are enough to
terminate the services of any worker under Articles 25 and 26 of the Chinese
labour law. Nothing is said about who has to prove these allegations and
how. In our Industrial Relations Legislations, any charge against a worker
has to be proved by an independent inquiry in which the worker will have
the right to be present, represented and heard. The procedure here is so
strict and pro-labour that many a times, employers have enticed trouble-making
workers to quit in exchange of a sumptuous sum rather than fixing a charge
against them.
The Chinese law states that the
employer can revoke the labour contract if, among other things, the "objective
conditions" of the existing contract have undergone a change so that the
original contract cannot be fulfilled. If an employer is close to bankruptcy
or "runs deep into difficulties in production and management and if reduction
of (his) personnel becomes really necessary", all that he has to do is
"explain" the situation to the union, report to the administration and
then go ahead and close the unit or resize the labour strength as he wants.
Compare this with our Industrial Disputes Act under which the employer
has to take specific permission of the Government for closure or reduction
of staff and pay compensation in case the Government approves of it.
The comrades also hide it from their
own followers that in China, there is no specified vacation-length that
workers can enjoy as a statutory guarantee. In our case, the law itself
says that for 11 months of work a labourer is entitled to one month of
paid vacation. Nor does the communist law specify the number of days of
casual and medical leaves, unlike as in our country. The same applies to
maternity leave and many other service benefits that are yet to become
a part of Chinese law.
Communists in India would brush
aside these "comparative realities" with a stereotypical reply, that it
is systemic difference: Communist China is a welfare state and capitalist
India is an exploitative state! They are mistaken -- a politically communist
China is economically more capitalist than India. The MNCs, including the
ubiquitous Coca Cola and Siemens, have flooded China and employers with
the right to hire and fire enjoy greater privilege in China than even back
home.
The double-speak that characterises
the political lingo of the communists is useful in misleading the working
class. Mr Somnath Chatterjee and his ilk tend to gloss over the truth about
labour legislation in communist countries when they stall even a reasonable
change in existing labour laws here. The historic experience in communist
countries has been that labour, instead of being protected, is exposed
to various disabilities, and their general standard of living plummets.
Flagging under communist rule, erstwhile
East Germany had not half the wages prevalent in West Germany. The terms
of unification of the two Germanys were set to grant the East Germans progressive
increase in wages over three years so that they could come up to the level
of West Germans.
Remember the Poles in 1970s under
a repressive communist regime. Finding that the wages they got brought
them no goods or services, they revolted. Gdansk shipyard revolt became
the flashpoint of a rebellion, which finally ended the communist regime
after a protracted struggle of 20 years.
In India as well, the communist-ruled
states are the most anti-labour. West Bengal and Kerala are indicative
of what may happen to the country if the communists were to ever come to
power. There has been a massive flight of capital from these states. West
Bengal, where Indian industry registered its genesis one century ago, is
in a shambles. Compare the industrial dynamism of the Mumbai-Pune belt
with the depressed condition of Kolkata's suburbs. In distant Jamnagar,
a huge oil refinery has come up; but in the new port of Haldia, even a
petrochemical unit is unable to succeed.
In Kerala, now that Congress-led
Government has survived a critical exchequer-position recently, a beginning
has been made to create a conducive environment for the new enterprises
with Chief Minister AK Antony rolling back the Government employees' strike
and agreeing to Asian Development Bank's terms to curb runaway strikes
and agitation to secure large assistance to modernise the State.
The Left, by blocking even the moderate
reforms suggested by the Centre, is preventing generation of employment.
Mao's brand of communism in China failed to generate more industrial employment
and had to contend with a low rate of growth. The Chinese economy grew
by eight to nine per cent only after the market reforms were introduced
under Deng Xiao-ping.
Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China
is an open supporter of the market economy. In Bangalore, during his India
trip last January, he had high words of praise for IT-doyen NR Narayanamurthy.
Market reforms have pushed FDI in China to 4.7 per cent of its GDP whereas
it is a miserly 0.5 in India -- and the communists are running down the
Vajpayee Government for its policy of allowing the MNCs to enter the country.
Experience in the US and the UK
also emphasises how flexibility in employment and increase in productivity
also guarantee jobs. The service industry in the United States, the fastest
growing economic sector, is expected to create 20 million jobs during this
decade. In the last decade, against some two million jobs lost, four million
additional ones were created as labour productivity rose for the first
time in the latter half of the 1990s. In India service economy like call
centres is estimated to produce 1.1 million high-salary jobs directly in
the next few years, and its overall impact on the economy would be enormously
positive.
We need to match the productivity
of our competitors like Hong Kong, Korea and Malaysia, and their narrow
delivery time and high quality. The Left critics of the Government talk
about other things but never come round to the point about how to create
jobs, and make productivity concomitant with India's potential.
(The writer is a BJP MP and can
be contacted at ethtv2@id.eth.net)
