A need for mediatory bodies in industrial and commercial relations

 As part of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, an organization which is hiring a hundred employees or more ought to have a works committee. The constitution of this committee is to consist of at least twenty members where the number of representatives from the employer’s side will not exceed the number of representatives from the employee’s. The responsibilities of this body entail the maintenance of amiable relations between the two parties. In selecting employees for this committee, the employer is to consult the union if there already is one. 

It is to be considered, that companies and organizations may have devised their own means to address grievances. This may include anything from a human resources department, to a grievance redressal cell, to a customer care helpline. It is to be stated that this would hold in the case of big and well off companies, and is unlikely to extend into the informal sector which is where most of the Indian economy yet resides. 

On the 26th of December, an editorial in the EPW titled ‘Worker’s Protest Amidst Industrial Apathy’ raised the role that these bodies are to play. Chronicling a protest by workers in a Wistron factory, a Taiwanese company which is contracted to makes iPhones - the editorial recounts images of arson and vandalism circulating. The plant is situated at Narasapura in Bangalore. Around 150 workers were arrested. 

The requirement of this body is pressing. Less than 75 kilometers away in Bidadi, workers and management are locked in a tussle regarding longer hours and punitive measures taken against short breaks at the Toyota Kirloskar Factory. The plant produces 300 cars a day in two shifts, strangely during the lockdown, where car sales were slumping the world over, production was amped up by sixty cars. Worryingly, there is no communication between the management and the workers. The president of their employees union, K Prasanna Kumar states that these measures have been implemented without any corresponding increase in manpower or wages. 

We can see clearly the requirement for a mediatory body in these circumstances. These examples are in the news and government officials are already involved. What may be of concern however are the numbers of such antagonisms that go unreported, leading to stalls in deliveries, production, constructions, unpaid wages, not to mention detrimental working conditions. 

Mediatory bodies cannot however be relegated merely to the production side of the equation. A customer must always have a say in the evaluation of the services or products which they pay for. Disputes at this end escalate to customer care, and worse comes to worse, go to consumer courts. Labour rating agencies like the Fairwork foundation, which has recently released its ratings for platform companies in India, such as Uber and Swiggy, do not take into consideration grievances which the customers who actually pay for these services may have. A chronicle of this may perhaps be compiled by an independent audit into the complaints received by the customer care cells of these companies. Who is to do this however? Can we trust companies to do this independently? 

Consumer courts have the authority only to hear cases which are brought to their notice. Yet, informal means of addressing this are coming together, in online forums, dedicated product sites, and groups who commingle around a shared interest on Facebook for example. Like the informal sector in the Indian economy however, compiling any macro level data on these practices is hard. One can only hope that social science departments in universities take a hint and stop sending anthropologists to study tribal pottery in the hope of saving some dying clan and attempt to compile an index regarding the reception, ratings and appraisals of individual commodities and services in the market.