Industrial Relations
XLRI JAMSHEDPUR PRANABESH RAY
A CLASSIC CLASS STRUGGLE Radha Iyer
The tolerance of the Telco workers suddenly gave way. The storm broke and within months the workforce, the management and the entire city of Pune were engulfed by this storm. Some attributed the cause to workers' leaders like Rajan Nair, others to Telco officials like Mehrunkar. The genesis of the phenomena however lay in the history of industrial relations in Telco over nearly fifteen years.
Pune was one of the first industrial centres to be established pursuant to the policy of geographic relocation of industries away from established industrial centres in the early sixties. During the sixties a number of large engineering companies set up new industries in the Pune region. Being predominantly engineering industries, the region attracted a large number of skilled workers from all over Maharashtra. This workforce was young, skilled, educated (being from technical training institutes such as ITI and private institutes); and there was a broad cultural homogeneity since most of them were Marathi‑speaking. Pune city, though not an industrial city to the sixties, has well established traditions of trade unionism amongst the municipal workers, the teachers and staff of other governmental bodies. Above all traditionally the workers in the engineering industry are known to be more militant and better organized. Basically this has to do with the nature of the work in the engineering industry, where man is invariably the master of the machine. Engineering jobs require knowledge, perception, judgment, use of discretion and higher intellectual abilities, all of which results in a self‑confident and assertive workforce. Added to all this is the fact that the new workers coming to Pune had to find residential quarters on the outskirts of Pune. The suburban districts of Pune grew into working class areas. Both
A CLASSIC CLASS STRUGGLE Radha Iyer
The tolerance of the Telco workers suddenly gave way. The storm broke and within months the workforce, the management and the entire city of Pune were engulfed by this storm. Some attributed the cause to workers' leaders like Rajan Nair, others to Telco officials like Mehrunkar. The genesis of the phenomena however lay in the history of industrial relations in Telco over nearly fifteen years.
Pune was one of the first industrial centres to be established pursuant to the policy of geographic relocation of industries away from established industrial centres in the early sixties. During the sixties a number of large engineering companies set up new industries in the Pune region. Being predominantly engineering industries, the region attracted a large number of skilled workers from all over Maharashtra. This workforce was young, skilled, educated (being from technical training institutes such as ITI and private institutes); and there was a broad cultural homogeneity since most of them were Marathi‑speaking. Pune city, though not an industrial city to the sixties, has well established traditions of trade unionism amongst the municipal workers, the teachers and staff of other governmental bodies. Above all traditionally the workers in the engineering industry are known to be more militant and better organized. Basically this has to do with the nature of the work in the engineering industry, where man is invariably the master of the machine. Engineering jobs require knowledge, perception, judgment, use of discretion and higher intellectual abilities, all of which results in a self‑confident and assertive workforce. Added to all this is the fact that the new workers coming to Pune had to find residential quarters on the outskirts of Pune. The suburban districts of Pune grew into working class areas. Both