This article narrates the conditions with which industrial workers in India have to contend with when bargaining for labour rights. It trains attention on restructuring of automobile manufacturing processes in India in the neoliberal phase and the erosion of labour rights through the recently introduced labour codes. The framing of labour action and protests as law and order problems in the public sphere, primarily through the news media, aided delegitimisation of unions and securitisation of labour relations, which, in turn, mounts steep challenges for workers’ strategies to start a social dialogue and force negotiation around labour rights and social security. The article scrutinises the political economy of media attention and the impact this has on the politics of protest. It argues that neoliberal processes and the discourse of national industrial development have inscribed tensions into the choice of protest strategies, making collective bargaining ineffectual.
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