Emerging trends in Industrial Relations:

We often used to hear about long term strikes or lock outs in the factories. Gherao and other violent
activities which were prevalent at one point of time are dormant these days. The trade Unions are found
to be in cordial relations with the management unlike old times. Similarly in employment relations, focus
has changed from just paying salary on time and painful performance appraisals to developing
employees. What has changed so much? Why are these changes prevailing?

There are various factors relating to economy, technology and human relations which are responsible
for these changes. Out of these emerging trends, few colors are pleasant to employers and few are to
employees. The trade unions significance is changing. The reasons of joining or leaving trade unions
have been greatly influenced by what is happening in the outside world. Now workers and employees
thinking prospective is long term and they look for more benefits instead of clinging to one group.

The competition is increasing in today’s era. The workers and employees even after they leave a
particular job has ‘n’ number of options to get absorbed. This is because of the influence of
globalization. The foreign investors are ready to invest in other countries’ industries or set up their own
factories in other countries. This gives rise of the number of jobs to the inhabitants of that host country.
Hence, employees or workers do not fear while leaving jobs. This is what has led to attrition also.

Mergers and Acquisitions leads to transfer of ownership. This transfer brings changes in the dynamics of
Trade unions. Along with this, the merger of one company into another changes the organizational
culture. Change in the ownership can be a bliss or a boom. The compensation structure, hierarchical
levels, business and technologies changes. This trend is more common these days. Every second day we
hear about this company is now acquired by that company in that much account and similar things. The
employers and government are coming up with new and emerging models to deal with these changes so
as to make as favorable as possible for employees. Due to technology advancements, the change
management has become dire need of the day. The manual efforts are decreasing due to increasing use
of technology. Hence, it is important to train the workforce to match the changes in technology and to
make them apt to work effectively. This has put a lot of focus on training and development of human
resources. Competency mapping for hiring has also been emerged out of these trends. This is because
due to technology advancements, specific skill sets are required for a particular job.

The Deregulation also plays a major role as an emerging trend in IR and ER. There is reduction in the
pension funds from government as well as increase and at some places decrease in the age of
retirement. The policies like voluntary employment separation and various others signifies the same.
The trends in joining trade unions is also changing. Now the trade unions has declined density. The
young generations are in a competitive job searches and they are not interested in joining unions as this
is not even a practice in emerging industries like Information Technology sector. The young employees
and women feel a risk in joining any trade union, the risk is deteriorating the relationship with the
employers. Hence, now there is less member strength in trade unions. The Collective bargaining levels
are also changing. In fact, the levels are reducing day by day.
In the present period the bargaining power of the unions is observed to be reducing due to
decentralization of unions. IR issues are dealt more at the company level than industry level. When the
unions’ coordination was at industry level, whole industry used to immobilize because of issues or
conflict

of IR at one single place and have a major impact on the whole nation but due to decentralization of IR
those trends are not observed now. Now if the IR issue arises, it is dealt in the same company without
affecting the other companies of the same industry. This may be because as the relationship between
the workers and the management is strengthening, because of more educated employees and industry
knowledge among the employees, even the employees believe that the effective way of dealing with the
issues is through going local.

Industrial Relations in Unorganized Sector

The emergence of U-WIN cards or now the Aadhaar card in itself to ensure that all unorganized workers
get social security scheme benefits covered under the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008.

The efficacy of delivery of various welfare schemes by the government to the unorganized sector’s
workers is dependent on the identification of genuine workers/beneficiaries. This can be well illustrated
by the words of our former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh "Lack of identity proof results in
harassment and denial of services to the poor and marginalized".

Though for all categories of workers covered under the Welfare Funds, legal obligation to issue identity
cards is on the part of the employer or contractor concerned. In practice, employer or contractors
generally do not indicate the workers on their record to avoid recovery of PF contributions, excise duty
etc. Thus, only a limited number of workers are able to get the requisite identity cards from their
employers/contractors. And it’s far more difficult when it comes to regulation of the same in the
unorganized sectors as they are home-based workers.

Many investigations have revealed that genuine target beneficiaries are not able to avail of the benefits
to which they are entitled and at the same time many non-entitled individuals are availing of welfare
benefits by securing identity cards through dubious means. This is can be validated by a research studies
conducted by SRC which indicated that the number of bogus workers at over 25 percent of persons
identified as unorganized workers. Thus, it is essential to set up an appropriate mechanism for
identifying genuine beneficiaries in administering any welfare scheme and keeping the data-base of such
beneficiaries up-dated.

This calls for the emergence of a data base which would help in locating each and every beneficiary
clearly. Once the data base is in place, smart card either U-Win or Aadhaar could be issued to the
respective beneficiary, which would carry all relevant information pertaining to the beneficiary and
his/her family members and also about the benefits due to the card holder with regard to the schemes
he/she fits in. Also, updating information pertaining to a beneficiary will be hassle-free once the smart
cards are operational.
Post that is imperative that the data base is updated with all the beneficiaries. This can be done by using
authorized agencies to survey the workers and link issuance of smart cards to that of registration of
workers.

Neo-Liberal Judicial Trends

The general perception during the regulation era was that the working class could count on the judiciary
as one of their allies, though there have also been judgements that sought to curb labour indiscipline
and establish order in the shop floor. But some significant judgements delivered during the 1990s and
later relating to contract labor, privatization, right to strike, bandhs and so on did not support the
contentions and interests of workers and trade unions. The Supreme Court had affirmed the policy
independence of the executive (i.e. the government) in the case of privatization also made critical
remarks in general against the right to strike and prohibited the right to strike of public employees. It
also imposed restraints on public protests like bandhs and so on and endorsed or asked the government
to impose the Essential Service Maintenance Act (ESMA). In addition to all these it also reversed its own
order providing for automatic absorption of contract labor upon abolition and argued that automatic
absorption was not provided for in the relevant law thus, it rewrote the positions held by the apex Court
on issues like contract labor and the right to strike .The position and action of the judiciary relating to
workers' actions such as strikes is an interesting instance of change in its stance. It had admitted that the
public interest litigations questioning the acts and deeds of the trade unions, the strikes by public
employees, the bonus payment to municipal employees in Mumbai, and so on and passed restraining
orders on unions' actions. The central and the state governments have been to willing to invoke ESMA
on strikes and the judiciary often endorses and even encourages it.

New Forms of Informal Economy Organizations

The stringent conditions of mainstream trade unions towards the informal economy spurred the rise of
several new forms labor and union types of organizations among the informal economy workers. The
Self Employed Women Association (SEWA) is the most notable amongst them. Though it was registered
as a trade union it has combined the functions of a trade union, a cooperative and a pressure group and
so on. Its significant role has not been limited to organizing the informal economy workers. It
participated actively in the creation of international networks like WIEGO and played an important role
in the adoption by ILO of the Home Workers Convention. It was instrumental in creation of organizations
and networks like the Street Net, the National Centre for Labor (NCL). The Government of India
formulated the National Policy for Street Vendors recently mainly due to the pressure exerted by
organizations of informal economy workers and the powerful lobbying work of NASVI and SEWA.