Ideological History of Trade Unions in India

Communist India: An Ideological Background of Trade Unions and Its Impact on Their Current Functioning

Arpit Jain

XLRI, Jamshedpur

PGDHRM | 2013-15

h13014@astra.xlri.ac.in

+91 7762834250

Arpit Jain

The article traverses through the history of Trade Unionism in India, and the underwriting Communist influence.

Trade Union Movement in India

The Trade Union Movement can be said to stem from the initial demand for the regulation of working conditions in the Indian factories, which came very surprisingly from the Lancashire textile capitalist lobby. They perceived that the emergence of a competitive rival in the Indian Textile industry under favourable conditions would deteriorate their position, and their demands lead to the First Factory Act in 1881.

The Trade Union Movement in British India received an impetus when Bombay Mill Hands Association was formed on 24th April, 1890. Coupled with this, the establishment of ILO in 1919 provided a source of inspiration for the workers to become politically conscious. India’s membership exerted great influence in the formation of a central organisation of workers, which came to be known to exist as the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920, for the purpose of conducting and coordinating the activities of the labour organisations.

The period from 1924 to 1935 can be regarded as the era of revolutionary trade union movement. M.N. Roy, Muzaffer Ahmed, S.A. Dange and Shawkat Osmani led the trade union movements and as a result the political consciousness among industrial workers increased. The First World War and its consequences brought a period of soaring prices, unprecedented exploitation for the industrialists but miserably low wages for the workers. The worker class throughout the world awakened to organise a Proletarian Revolution. The setting up of a League of Nations Agency (ILO) gave an international importance to the labour problem.

The nationalist leaders took the initiative of forming the Trade union...