Inscrutable are the ways of public-sector trade unions. The Federation of the State Trading Corporation Employees’ Unions (FSTCEU) lived up to this image when it resorted to an eight-day strike last fortnight over a peculiarly non-economic issue: the shifting of the corporation’s Delhi branch office from its location on the arterial Janpath to Malcha Marg…
Rarely had an event invited such determined and concerted action by Union Government: When the 24-hour national strike called by the National Campaign Committee (NCC) ended at 6 a.m. on January 20. two things stood out clearly: the effects of the strike were either negligible or tremendous, depending on which side of the fence the…
On January 18 the strike by 2.5 lakh textile workers in Bombay’s 60 mills will complete a year; 25,000 of these workers in eight mills have been on strike since October 1981. In every way, the lengthening strike has become a grim milestone in India’s industrial history, with the opposing sides only gaining in belligerence…