One of the unintended consequences of the immense popularity of muscular trade unionism prevalent in India since the 1960s and 1970s was violence in industry. The collateral damage of this resulted in injuries to workers and managerial staff along with damage to industry and public property, resulting in enormous monetary loss to industry, the exchequer, and society. Further, this sometimes led to closure/migration of industries with resultant loss of jobs. A paradigm shift in industrial relations in India occurred in the 1990s following the adoption of free-market policies. As a result of liberalization, a sea change occurred in the business environment, characterized by increasing competition among industries for survival in the global market economy. The policy of globalization along with the potential market capacity and availability of low-cost trained workforce led many of the leading multinational corporations (MNCs) to set up their manufacturing bases in India, giving a tough competition to their local industry. The dawn of liberalization, privatization, and globalization, in the country, was followed by some improvement in the industrial relations climate. These MNCs from developed countries, to reduce trade union activism, prefer the system of “work committees” having representatives from various departments in the company, for managing labor relations. The emergence of more knowledgeable workers with the rise of information technology (IT) industry also contributed to the decline of workers' union. With better dispute resolution mechanisms to an extent, there was a decrease in strikes and violence in industries. This is supported by official figures that show a decline of industrial disputes from 2889 in 1979 to 143 in 2014. From official figures, it is evident that in the post-liberalization period, the number of industrial disputes has greatly decreased, but there has not been a corresponding decrease in the number of workers involved and person-days lost ...
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0972-6748 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_25_19 ID - ref1 ER -