The Unorganised Sector Issues And Concerns Essay Example for Free

The Un organise Sector Issues And Concerns EssayProblems of DefinitionThe protrude of the Indian cranch force is employed in what is loosely referred to as unstructured domain. Most of them argon neither coordinate nor hive any access to social security. Their habit is unprotected, their rents ar super low, and a deep section of them live under conditions below the poverty line. The studyal efforts by the state welcome understand little to improve their living coalitions. This is a matter of concern non unless for the craft matrimonys plainly in like manner for e genuinely rational person in this country. Defining the term unincorporated orbit is a difficult task indeed. Apart from the conceptual difficulties, the explanation also depends on who is defining it and for what purpose. in that location be broadly three different usages of the term. Firstly, the government plan documents m-id demographic surveys extensively use the term. check to this usag e, the unorganized ara is defined preferably negatively, is comprising of the moil force that falls outside the sum of moneyized firmament.The set up firmament is defined is the champion covering tire force employed in all the enterprises in the habitual field and only the non-agricultural establishments in the private sphere of influence employing 10 or more becomeers The criterion of 10 is derived from the Factories Act, which covers all the establishments employing 10 or more people. This definition though indicative of the structure of engagement fails to narrow each arena, and on that pointfore leaves many questions unanswered. It nonetheless serves the purpose of government planning and projections. wedded the fact that nonunionised heavens accounts for more than 90% of the grasp force in the country, the inadequacies of this definition as reflected in the statistical information, appear to be marginal, even though in factual terms the numbers may b e really high. Another governmental source, which defines the unformed sector, again for statistical and administrative purposes, is that of the Central Statistical Organisation. concord to this definition, the unformed sector includes all those unincorporated enterprises andhousehold industries (other than the nonionised ones) which are not regulated by any statute law and which do not maintain annual accounts or balance sheets. This definition also serves the limited administrative purposes, and does not qualify the sector. In any case, some(prenominal) the preceding(prenominal) definitions are base on the experienceing legal framework, whether concerning labour or business establishments, and are therefore liable to qualifying with constantlyy change in legislation. Therefore, these definitions are hardly adequate tools for social analysis. The second source of definition of the term unorganized sector is literature in the economics discipline. Economists rescue trie d to define this sector in terms of the organisation of capital, personality of products, technologies used (traditional or modern), the markets served (local or general) or the consumers of the products (rich or poor)The dissertation has been that the unorganised sector is characterised by low technology that it caters to local markets and to consumers who come from the lower segment of the society. There are many difficulties with this definition too. Bannerji argues that attempts at clearly delineating the character of the unorganised sector have not been successful because such clear-cut demarcation is not universally valid. The exact combination of activities that actually exist in any one region at a given cartridge holder, seem to be an final result of the interaction of various factors such as complexity of the economy, the actual extent and distribution of control of investment resources and the technological choices available to that economy. Since the configuration of such factors is al some always specific to each situation, what is true of one country at one time, fails to apply to another Attempts to distinguish the two sectors on the basis of products, markets and technologies have a severe limitation, because of the extensive linkages that exist in the midst of the sectors, very often the organised sector pickings advantage of the low cost operation in the unorganised sector to manufacture its get products which are for general market.Moreover, bulk of the export goods are manufactured in tile unorganised sector through a systematic decentralisation of the production process and the putting-out system. The trio usage of the term unorganised sector is by the get by unions and those concerned with labour. The attempt made by Nirmala Bannerji comes under this category of usage of the term. According to her, the unorganised sector usually consists of productive activities withloosely formed groups bound by diverse types of promiscuous wor king signals. It includes a section of the self-employed, wage earners, family producers as also household workers. The signifi stackce of this definition is that it brings in the nature of work relationship as the main factor that distinguishes organised from the unorganised sector. The unorganised sector consists of productive activities carried out by loosely formed groups which are bound by informal contracts. plane though Bannerjis definition brings out the most important feature film feature of the unorganised sector, from labours horizontal surface of view, further exploration is required to get an insight into the complexity and the diversity of this sector.There are legitimate fundamental difficulties in using the existing categories of organised sector and unorganised sector for trade union purposes. Trade unions by their very nature are essentially concerned with protecting labour from using and arbitrariness of whoever employs them. If labour Protection is taken i s the basic criterion of the trade unions, then organised and unorganised cease to be homogeneous categories, because we find unprotected labour in both the sectors. Even though the unorganised sector accounts for the majority of them, even the organised sector has its own share of unprotected labour in the form of casual, contract, badli, and temporary workers whose employment conditions are similar to those in the unorganised sector. One may argue that the proportion of the unprotected labour in the organised sector is very marginal.This is however not true, because, during the eighties there has been a gradual decline in permanent employment accompanied by a sharp rise in the casual employment. A recent survey of seven major industries, commissioned by Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 1991, reports that during the eighties, in almost all the industries the proportion of casual and temporary employment has increased phenomenally, ranging between a quarter to nearly half of the tota l workforce. The National have Survey info also show a similar trend. According to this data, in the organised sector, the employment growth rate has declined from 2.48 per cent during 1977-78 1983 to 1.38 per cent during 1983 1987-88. In the organised manufacturing sector, particularly, employment had virtually stagnated during 1983- 1987-88. Given the above trends, from the trade union perspective, it would be fallacious to characterise organised sector as the protected sector, and the unorganised sector as theunprotected sector.Apart from these conceptual difficulties, very often, among the trade union circles, there exists confusedness between the terms unorganised sector and unorganised labour. Many use these terms synonymously, even though there is a substantial difference between the two. While the former refers to the unorganised part of the sedulousness or the whole economy, the latter refers to workers who are not organised as trade unions. It is true that the bulk of t he labour force in the unorganised sector is not organised, but at the same time there are also unorganised workers in the organised sector. Similarly, there are also many workers within the unorganised sector, as we shall see, who are organised as trade unions.From a purely trade union point of view, it may be more appropriate to use the terms protected sector and unprotected sector which cut across both organised and unorganised sectors. However, it would be impossible to all in all discard the terms that are currently in use because the entire edifice of the statistical data is built on this foundation. Nonetheless, it would be useful to be aware of the inadequacies of the existing categories. One needs to be, particularly, too-careful while interpreting the official data.Labour in the Unorganised SectorKeeping the above mentioned definitional problems in view, let us now examine the salient features of the labour force in the unorganised sector as reflected in the official dat a. According to 1991 census, the total labour force in India is estimated to be 317 one thousand thousands. come forth of this, the organised sector employs only 26.8 millions (8.5 %), while the unorganised sector employs as many as 290.2 millions, (91.5 %) (See graph 1 and Table 1).Pension scheme for agricultural labourers all over the country. As discussed earlier, the distinction between these two sectors is very life-and-death from the point of view of employment relationship. It is not clear from the census data whether the figures for the organised sector employment include the casual / contract workers also. If it does, then the proportion of the protected labour will be less than 8.5 per cent. While the majority of workers in the organised sector hive rule-governed salaried jobs in the registered factories and service establishments, the workers in the unorganised sector are either self-employed or work as casual wage labourers in a wide range of sectors both non-agricul tural and agricultural. The crucial distinction between the sectors is the nature of employment relationship. Going by Bannerjis definition cited earlier, the unorganised sector includes agricultural labourers, construction workers, lumber workers, weight workers, beedi workers, workers in small and tiny industrial units, powerloom and handloorn workers, self-employed workers, internal workers and so on.If we use the term unprotected sector, then the list also includes all the casual / contract workers employed in the organised sector. Technically, labour laws do not differentiate between organised and unorganised sectors. However, in practice, they provide ample opportunities to the employers and their contractors to deny basic rights to current categories of workers. As we shall see later, there are certain structural problems, which make, it difficult for workers to assert their rights. In the organised sector, for instance, the production strategies such as subcontracting, a ncillarisation, etc., are essentially geared to by-pass the protective legislations. As a result, over the years, the proportion of casual and contract labour hasbeen increasing in almost all the industries in both private and public sector. An important characteristic feature of the unorganised sector is that it employs a large number of women.The relative proportion of distaff workers is very high in this sector. As shown in Table 1, only 4.2% of the total female workers (as defined in Census) are in the organised sector. The corresponding percentage for male workers is 10.2%. The difference is rather striking if we have a bun in the oven at the absolute figures. As against 23 million male workers there are only 3.8 million female workers in the organised sector. That is, for every six male workers there is only one female worker. In wrinkle to this, in the unorganised sector, there are 86.8 million women workers against 203.4 million male workers. That is, there is one woman w orker for every two and odd male workers. Table 2 shows the bring up distribution in both the sectors. In the organised sector, women interpret 14.2%, whereas in the unorganised sector they constitute 30%.In terms of wages and earnings, there exists a substantial difference between the organised and the unorganised sectors. Table 3 shows the aggregate figures for the year 1981. Out of the total annual income of Rs.87,840 crores, the self-employed workers take in Rs.44,719 crores (50.9%,) while the wage and salary earners earned Rs.43,121 crores (49.1%). Within the wage earners category, the organised sector accounted for Rs.24,850 (28.3%) while the unorganised sector accounted for Rs.18,271 crores (20.8%). If we look at overall sector-wise figures by combining self-employed and the wage earners in the unorganised sector, we would get the broad picture of earnings in the unorganised sector in contrast to those in the organised sector. The unorganised sector accounts for 71.7 per c ent of the total earnings in comparison to 28.3 of the organised sector.The organised sector workers, even though account for only nine-tenth of the total workforce, earn more than one-fourth (one third accord to the latest figures) of the nations total wages and incomes. The figures of the average annual income per worker bring out the contrast between the sectors more sharply. While the organised sector worker earned Rs.10,851 per annum, the wage earner in the unorganised sector earned Rs.2,482 and the self-employed person earned Rs. 3,549. If we take the average of the unorganised sector as a whole, the figure would be some(prenominal) lower. These figures are for the year 1981, and the present figures in actual terms may be relatively higher.Issues and ConcernsThe primary concern regarding labour in the unorganised sector is that most of them live below the poverty line. Their access to the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, education, health and other forms of social security is extremely poor. One of the major reasons for this is that they are not organised. They deprivation organisations which can effectively represent their issues and problems at the interior(a) level. The established trade unions in the country, including the left unions, have in all neglected this sector. This is reflected in the social station figures of the central trade union organisations. According to the latest verification of membership conducted by the central government in 1990, the membership of the top five unions is around 10 millions, which is nigh around 3 per cent of the total working population in the country. Even though this includes both the organised sector as well as the unorganised sector, the proportion of the latter is very insignificant.For example, according to 1980 figures, the INTUC, which at that time was the largest union, had only 15 unions in the agricultural sector with a membership of 25,931, which is somewhat more th an one per cent of its total membership of over 22 lakhs. Similarly, CITU hid only 14 unions with a membership of 2,212, which is less than one per cent of its total membership of over 3 lakhs. There are, of course, certain structural difficulties in organising workers in the unorganised sector. Unlike in. the organised sector, the existing conditions are not contributive to the functioning of trade unions. In the organised sector, that is, in large factories and other establishments, collectivebargaining institutions are well developed and trade unions are accepted as legitimate organisations representing workers. In other words, the elbow room of struggle for better wage and working conditions are institutionalised. This is however not the case with the unorganised sector. The future(a) are some of the problems at the very fundamental level in this sector.1. Employment regulationIn the unorganised sector the primary issue is regulation of employment. This is a very difficult ta sk for unions to achieve. The employment contract is unwritten and informal. Workers are at the mercy of the employer. Giving an appointment letter is unheard of in this sector. By making the very employment relationship informal, the employer covers himself out of the statutory obligations. Workers in order to make any legal claim have to first identified the employer and establish the employment relationship. Quite obscure from these legal problems, since workers depend on the employer who may be a contractor or a link or the principal employer himself, for their sustenance, they dare not take recourse to legal action. This problem is more cracking in the case of migrant workers, for instance, in the construction industry. Another means of bypassing a formal employment relationship adopted by trader-merchant-manufacturer is to utilise the home-based family labour.The so-called self employed workers in beedi, carpet, handloom, coir, hosiery and a host of other industries, come under this category. The trader-merchant-manufacturer or his middlemen provide the raw square to the home-based workers and collect the semi-finished or finished goods which they market themselves. The price that the workers get for their value-addition is very low and equivalent to wages, and their living conditions are no better than the wage labour. So, the self-employed who constitute nearly 56 per cent of the total workforce in the country are not really self-employed in the true sense.In the absence of a formal employment relationship the established trade unions, which are more used to functioning in the organised sector where all that they have to do is submit charter of demands and negotiate a sensible bargain for the workers, find it extremely difficult to fight for workers in the unorganised sector. Trade union work in the unorganised sector is much more demanding and relates to certain structural changes of very fundamentalnature which requires struggle at various leve ls. The means and strategies to be adopted for achieving these changes also differ very much with those that are adopted in the organised sector. The following are the three different levels at which the trade unions in the unorganised sector have to fight. Grass-root Level Labour Courts Political LevelAt the grass-root level, as mentioned earlier, it is very difficult to identify a single, consistent employer to deal with. As a deliberate dodging, contractors keep changing from time to time in order to avoid any legal binding. Also, at times, workers themselves fly the coop from one workplace to another. In certain cases such as domestic workers, unions have to deal with duplex employers who are not concentrated in one place but scattered all over. Given such a wide variation and the fluid state of employer-employee relationship, unions in this sector have to modernise innovative strategies to fight for the basic rights of their members. The second level of struggle is in the l abour courts. Since the employer-employee relationship in this sector is not institutionalised, the disputes invariably end up in litigation.For instance, in case of contract workers in the organised sector much of the trade union work involves fighting court cases, which demands not only determination on the part of the unions but also resources. This is one of the major reasons why the unions of the workers in the organised sector turn a blind eye to the plight of the contract and casual workers. The third and the most important level of struggle is at the political level for policy changes and enactment of protective legislation by the government. This requires the unions to have a wider support base coupled with political campaigns.2. Lack of trade union consciousnessIn this sector the very idea of trade union organisation is new. Due to their dangerous employment situation, workers are not always forthcoming to participate in the union activity. The unions have an extremely di fficult task of gaining the confidence of workers to begin with, and then convincing them -about the importance of dealing with their employers collectivelyrather than as individuals.3. Struggle for legitimacyIn the unorganised sector, the basic struggle of the trade unions is for legitimacy of their own existence and freedom to function as trade unions. They are confronted with hostile employers whose basic advantage in operating in the unorganised sector is its unregulated employment and availability of cheap labour. Since trade unions by their very nature fight for regulation of employment, better wages and social security measures, they strike it the very root of this advantage. This results in a bitter conflict in which very often the trade unions are at the receiving end. Given such hostility to any form of trade union activity in this sector, the union activists have to find various means of obtaining legitimacy.Where hostility is very high, the activists function only as a intended organisation. As the situation improves they start functioning both as a voluntary organisation as well as a trade union simultaneously. Since, by definition, these two types of organisations have different legal status the activists function as either, depending on the need and circumstance. much(prenominal) a strategy is essential in order to continue the organisational effort in a hostile environment.4. Issues tie in to development policyTrade unions in the unorganised sector are confronted with not merely employment and wage issues, but also are forced to raise certain fundamental issues related to developmental policy. This is so because, in various sectors, such as fisheries, forestry, agriculture, etc., the workers directly depend, on natural resources for their livelihood. Governments development policy has a direct bearing on their lives. For instance, the forest workers, who have for generations lived in forests and enjoyed certain customary rights over forest resources, are now confronted with modem developmental agencies such as state corporations which have drawn boundaries within the forest area depriving them of their traditional rights, and in many cases even displacing them. The local people depend on forests for fuel, fodder, and material to build their houses.The forest corporations which were created with the explicit purpose of directly taking up commercial activity related to forest resources, and thereby replacingthe middlemen who had been exploiting the forests, have, in reality, deprived the local peoples access to the forests. Another example is that of fish workers living near and around Chilika Lake located in Orissa on the eastern coast. Thousands of fish workers for generations hid depended on this lake for their livelihood. notwithstanding now, with government leasing out the lake to private entrepreneurs for developing prawn culture for export, these workers have been debarred from fishing in the lake. Such issues, related to the governmental policy can be taken up only at the national level, which means that there should be a national level organisation to represent the interests of the unprotected workers in the unorganised sector. Today, unfortunately, such an organisation does not exist.5. Lack of visibilityLastly, the workers in the unorganised sector lack visibility at the national level. In contrast to workers in the organised sector, their working conditions and problems hardly ever become subjects of national debate. This is best illustrates by the fact that the primary focus of the New Economic polity is the organised sector. The question of exit policy has generated a great deal of debate, and become a politically sensitive issue. It is a different matter whether the government is genuinely concerned about the retrenched workers in the organised sector. The point is, in the unorganised sector, which employs more than 90% of the total workforce in the country, redundancies and retre nchments are a daily affair. Ironically, this issue has never merited a debate or discussion either in the media or in the trade union establishments.SourceUnprotected Labour in India Issues and Concerns by Sarath Davala (ed.) Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1994, pp1-13.