Article - 105 Week 31 It’s All About Fairer Laws

Article - 105 Week 31 

It's All About Fairer Laws

All our ports & terminals are susceptible to periodic convulsive paralysis. Conflicts between management and the labour force is the most common cause. When there is a collision, we look and debate vociferously on who was right and who was wrong. If you follow the unfortunate incidence in Maruti Factory in Manesar, you would see an extreme example. Many condemn the gruesome act while defending the workers on their reasonable demands for higher pay.  In any case the damage is done irreparably. The nation's industrial culture is sullied. And we would see many such similar confrontations, not only in factories across India, but also in our Terminals, Ports, & CFSs. The intensities & gruesomeness may vary , but such events would haunt us for a long long time. 

All these social outbursts stem from one bad law of our land. The Labour Law! We can hire  -  but can not fire, even when we go into losses or even wind down. What an unfair tragedy ! A dying man is not permitted die in peace, even though he was generating many jobs! The employer is always circumspect, because he himself does not know what would happen tomorrow. The market could come down or his factory may be declared unlawful by any funny law. The best insurance for him is to take as many temporary workers as he possibly can and maintain a minimum number of permanent workers, by cutting through the cumbersome maize of red-tapes. That's what happened in Manesar. And that's what happens in a more twisted way in our ports & terminals.

Once you manage to slip in as a permanent worker in a Port, your life & your future generations' life is safe and secure. Union is your impenetrable shield. Your productivity and discipline don't matter. Your wages are constantly reconstructed to beat the wages outside. Company's high profits during market upticks makes you angry & violent for more wages and the Company's losses during low periods makes you scorn and deride the management. You stop working. The Company hires temporary workers to compensate. You become angry both at the Company and the poorer temporary workers. The temporary worker takes one third your salary and produces three times more than you. This may make you angrier - but makes the temporary poorer worker hate you.  He aspires to be in your shoes one day. To have a secure, pampered, indisciplined, lazy, and most of all an unaccountable life style with loads of assured money. Then, he forms his own Union. He demands wages parity. The Company realizes that without him, works would slow down to a stop, because you are highly unproductive and at times unpredictably destructive. If the Company gives parity and permanence, the temporary worker becomes like you - angry,  vocal, violent, and lazy. There rises a distinct wall of animosity between the management and both the Unions. Enemy's enemy becomes a friend. Both the Unions join hands to punish the common enemy : The job-creator. The drama unfolds. Those in the Unions enjoy a more & more lavish life with lesser and lesser accountability. Those outside the Unions, the common poor Indians, struggle for a job for a pittance and live a life of poverty and want. The Companies stagnate and mostly wind down over a period of time or live on the dole-outs from the tax payers' money, just to pay the Union members. Investors and entrepreneurs run away. The Party gets deserted soon. All become losers - poorer and frustrated in a nation of plenty.

All this because of an unnatural Law . The Law that decrees you to hire but not fire. Until this unnatural Law is revoked, our Terminals & Ports shall be on a slow march to misery and redundancy.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Brgds

Capt Rath