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12/16/09 Trade Union Movement in India 7
SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF UNIONS
• Wage & salary bargaining
• Fight for continuous improvement in employee benefits
• Improving working conditions at work place
• Improving welfare, healthcare & recreation facilities, and leisure
at workplace
• Increasing rest periods, holidays, paid leave and time-offs
• Decreasing working hours, work load esp. manual, and hazardous
working conditions
• Improving career and salary rise prospects & job security
• Protecting employees against arbitrary / unjust actions of
Management
• The trade union movement in India has a history of over 125 years.
• The British who brought the Industrial Revolution with them also
brought its ill-effects such as exploitation of the labour class,
discrimination between men and women, hostile working
conditions, perpetuation of child labour etc., which gave rise to
emergence of unions.
The
Amalgamated The The
Madras and
society of Printer’s Kamgar
Calcutta
railway Union of Hitwardhak
Postal
Servants Calcutta, Sabha 1910.
Union, 1907
in India, 1905
1897
• The year 1918 was an important one for the Indian Trade union
movement.
• It marked the start of a new era, an era of growth and one in which
leadership of trade unions was to pass from social workers to
politicians.
• The movement took permanent roots in the Indian soil after the close
of World war I.
12/16/09 Trade Union Movement in India 15
• The Industrial unrest grew up as a result of the economic
difficulties caused by the First World War.
• The workers organizations sprang up all over India chiefly in jute and
cotton textiles, in the railways and among the transport workers in
general.
The following are the main features of the movement in this period:
• The tables show that the Indian trade union movement greatly
expanded during 1920-1929.
• The communist organized a no. of new unions and revived old unions
leading to an increase in no. of unions.
• The Communist leaders organized textile workers of Bombay and established the
famous Girni Kamgar Union.
• They also staged a successful strike at the Lillua Workshop of eastern India Railway.
• The Trade union thus started working in close cooperation with the nationalist forces
in the country.
• Labour Day was celebrated for the first time in 1927 on Ist May.
• This led to more unions coming under the influence of the communist leadership.
• Failing to have its way the moderate group walked out of the
congress with 30 unions having a membership of 95,639 and
formed a new federation called the Indian Trade Union
Federation.
• The Red trade union was disbanded and the unions under
it joined the AITUC.
12/16/09 Trade Union Movement in India 28
• In 1938 at Nagpur, the NTUF was affiliated as a separate unit to the
AITUC.
• Later in 1940 the NTUF was dissolved and merged with the AITUC.
• In 1937, there were 379 strikes which involved 6.47 lakh workers
and resulted in a loss of 89.92 lakh man-days.
• By 1949, the trade union movement was split again with the
INTUC, the AITUC, the HMS and the UTUC representing the
four rival groups and a few national federations and unions
remaining unaffiliated with any of them.
• During this period there was no trade union unity. The HMS, the
AITUC and the UTUC worked together in some places but the
INTUC was completely aloof.
• In 1955 Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh was established by the Bhartiya Jan Sangh under the
domination of the Bhartiya Janta Party.
• A split in the AITUC formed the Centre of Indian Trade Unions under the influence of the
Communist Party Marxists and the AITUC under the Communist party of India.
Total % Total %
BMS 3117 26.2 1211 21.04
INTUC 2706 22.75 2236 38.85
CITU 1798 15.12 331 5.75
HMS 1477 12.42 763 13.26
AITUC 924 7.77 345 5.99
UTUC(LS) 803 6.75 621 10.79
UTUC 540 4.54 165 2.87
NFITU
12/16/09 530 Trade Union Movement
4.45 in India 84 1.46 41
Progress of Trade Unions before
Independence
Year No of registered Trade
Unions
1927-1928 29
1933-1934 191