slogan of Class War as well.
When I started working as a Manager in an industrial Unit in 1964 and right up to 1980,in Acts that were enacted in respect of labour- management relations, the curriculum that was prescribed in the Colleges, and the way labour officers were trained this Socialist idea of class-conflict was an assumed factor. It culminated in 1976 when the democracy was virtually strangulated in Emergency the word ‘Socialism ‘was added to the Preamble of the Constitution of India. Originally it was not there in 1950.
T was not seeing or experiencing Class Conflict as an idea germinating in the minds of the workers. In the Scientific Communist jargon, their class consciousness was not awakened sufficiently. Even today I do not find them growing in that direction in any way. An ordinary worker wants job, wants a stable source of income and wants rise in this income from time to time. A worker often wants more salary than his fellow worker. A worker wants promotions, pension Fund and numerous holidays, loans also once in a while, wants guarantee of Income is willing to follow leader and is ready to respond by shouting leader's slogans. ‘Eating even mud for the community’ is the basis of willingness to strike. In fact one is unwilling because industrial action disrupts stable income, one does not necessarily think identically as a member of worker as a class, does not see Employer as an enemy. If that employer happens to be a company then one does not see any individual as such an employer. What one sees are the fellow employees who are as much beneficiaries as oneself. One is jealous of those individuals for their salaries. One thinks that one should get more. One does have some personal quarrels, anger and enmity but they are as an individual and not as a Class.
Thave not seen the unity amongst the employers or factory owners as a class. Even in employer-employee disputes I have not seen employers helping each other. Each one was on his own for profit, for benefits or for solving own problems. There used to be employers’ Associations formed or split when an issue arose with the Government to formulate common petitions and in distributing largesse like import licences. I have seen more divisions, jealousies and quarrels than united actions in such employers’ associations.
To solve the disputes between the labour and management,for ‘class-warriors’ there is the Industrial Disputes Act and other legislation and armies of labour-lawyers, Courts, Consultants, and officers, clerks and Peons. The basic approach is to go to court for settling bi-partite disputes. Regardless of nomenclature used there is an inherent fallacy in all these laws and legal superstructure. The inherent untruth is based on upholding the notion of class- conflict. Since it is based on this conflict culture, and since court has to say yes or no, and it results in one side
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