TRADE UNIONISM

KARL MARX
SYDNEY BEATRICE WEBB
ROBERT HOXIE
MAHATMA GANDHI
TRADE UNION

 Voluntary organizations of workers formed to

promote and protect their interests through
collective actions
 Theories of TU are abstract principles and
ideologies that explain the basic motivating
factors in organization of TU
OBJECTIVES AND NEED FOR TRADE UNIONS

 Wages and salaries

 Working conditions
 Personnel policies
 Discipline
 Welfare
 Employee-employer decision
 Negotiating machinery
 Safeguarding organizational health and interest of
industry
FUNCTIONS OF TRADE UNIONS
 Militant or protective or intra mutual
 Fraternal or extra mutual
 Political functions
 Social functions
DECLINING TRADE UNIONISM
Declining membership
 –Laws have taken over much of the union’s traditional role

as the workers’ protector.

 –Automation, globalization and technology have reduced

jobs in unionized manufacturing sectors.

 –Unions have fail to organize new plants.

 –Unions have been more successful in organizing workers in

the public sector.

 –Management has become better at resisting union

organizing efforts
KARL MARX: CLASS CONFLICT& COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

 Natural outcome of capitalism

 Necessary to protect wage & improving
working conditions
 Labour movement –pure & simple trade unionism-
workers subordinate to owners
 TU should not limit itself- should work to emancipate
workers and abolish capitalism, abolish wage system
 Criticism of capitalist system of the relevant time
 Advocated a rapid, radical, even violent overthrow of the
capitalist system to change to socialism
 THE TRADE UNIONS ACT, 1926

Origin was the historic Buckingham Mills Case (1920) in which the
Madras High Court granted an interim ban against the Strike Committee
of Madras Labour Union forbidding them to make certain workers to
break their contract of employment, refusing to return to work.

TU leaders found that they were liable to prosecution for bonafide union
activities and it was felt that some legislation for the protection of trade
unionism was necessary.

N. M. Joshi (Gen Sec of AITUC) moved resolution for registration &

protection of TU by Government
MARX: “HISTORY OF ALL HITHERTO EXISTING SOCIETY IS
HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE”

 Emphasized role of intellectuals-to imbibe class

consciousness, outside the economic struggle &
outside worker-employer relation
 In recent years, in public sectors workers aspire
for TU leadership that is representative of social
composition
 Marx with Engels played a key role in drafting
“Communist Manifesto” in Germany
SYDNEY-BEATRICE WEBB
 SOCIALIST PATTERN OF SOCIETY
 TU more than economic
benefits for members
 Role of unions to usher into
socialism through political actions
 Like Marx, Webbs believed market pressure drove workers to
organize into unions to protect eco interests
 Conditions of employment determined by chain of bargains
linking-manual worker, capitalist employer, wholesale trader,
shopkeeper & consumer
 Pressure starts with consumer and ends in effective production
WEBBS (CONT)
 Opposed to capitalism
 Instrumental role as intellectual leaders in Labour
Party in Britain
 Construed “Socialist Manifesto” converting a
capitalist Britain into a mixed economy
 Unlike Marx advocated a gradual & non-violent
evolution to a socialist form of government
ROBERT HOXIE:
UNIONS IN CAPITALISM

 TU evolve differently out of

social environmental factors
 US unions more realistic

& opportunistic. Identified 5 functional types:

1. Business: Trade conscious than class conscious, collective bargaining and
actions
2. Friendly & Uplift: Social upliftment of workers through bargaining &
political actions
3. Revolutionary Unionism: Class conscious, follow Marx’s dictum,
Industrial, political action
4. Quasi anarchy Unionism: strikes, sabotage& violence
5. Predatory unionism: leader based, hand in gloves with employers
MAHATMA GANDHI: TRUSTEESHIP
 Increase wealth through talent
& surplus in public causes
 Resources held as common
ownership meant for common
benefit
M.GANDHI