Trade Unions in Contemporary India: Revitalisation Strategies and Migrant Workers

Abstract

This article explores diverse strategies adopted by Indian trade unions (TUs) to counteract their decline, with a specific focus on migrant labour in contemporary India. While studies in the past have analysed unionism and strategies at the nation-state level, this article draws from interviews with senior leaders of the three central Indian TUs to underscore the diversity of approaches among the TUs. It first draws on Frege and Kelly’s work on union revitalisation to make sense of the organisational strategies adopted by unions to adapt to globalisation and neoliberal policies in the context of India’s transition from a command to a market economy, characterised by intricate institutional arrangements and a prevalence of informal labour. It then uses Alberti’s framework that distinguishes between universalistic and particularistic approaches, with a focus on intersectionality, to explore whether Indian TUs adopt the former approach rooted in class identity, or the latter approach based on the intersecting and complex dimensions of inequality experienced by migrant workers. The article finds that individual union strategies vary on account of their historical origins, ideological underpinnings and relationship with the state and the market. It argues that the disconnect between TUs and the vast migrant workforce in India holds critical significance due to the substantial number of migrant workers in the country, their vulnerability to exploitation, and the role their exclusion has played in the TUs’ decline. The article suggests a combination of universalistic and particularistic approaches to bridge this disconnect, and in doing so it offers a novel disaggregated perspective of TU strategies at the subnational level, scrutinising the approaches of three central Indian TUs through an intersectionality lens and advocating for necessary course correction.

Introduction

This article aims to contribute to the literature on trade union (TU) revitalisation by examining the diverse strategies that Indian TUs have adopted to combat their decline, with a specific focus on the recruitment of migrant labour. Our analysis is anchored by the varieties of unionism literature—based on the varieties of capitalism literature—and examines the strategies shaping union revival approaches in the aftermath of the economic reforms in India. This article also delves into the intricate realm of migrant worker outreach examining three TUs’ approaches using the intersectionality framework and argues for a course correction. By comprehensively examining these dynamics, this study offers insights and recommendations to facilitate TUs’ resurgence in an increasingly complex labour landscape in contemporary India.

We begin with the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature that argues that in the Western context, there is not one capitalism but several forms of capitalism. Hall and Soskice (2001) develop the idea of two distinct types of political economies at opposite ends of the spectrum—liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). Building on these distinct ideal types, the varieties of capitalism literature argues that social, political and economic institutions and institutional complementarities can go on to produce and generate ‘nationally distinctive forms of capitalism’ (Hall & Soskice, 2001, p. vi). ¹

In turn, the role of TUs is markedly different in the two types of economies. In LMEs, TUs are less powerful due to the prioritisation of the competitive market economy where firms rely heavily on the market relationship between the worker and employer to organise relations in the labour force. In contrast, in CMEs, TUs are a significant actor in the industrial relations arena; more cohesive and encompassing, TUs play a key role in wage determination through collaboration and collective bargaining (Hall & Soskice, 2001, pp. 29–30).

This distinction in TUs is further elaborated by Frege and Kelly’s (2003, 2004) work on ‘varieties of unionism’. Drawing on the varieties of capitalism literature, they argue that just as capitalism is not uniform across nation-states, there are varieties of unionisms—across nation-states, and over time (Frege & Kelly, 2004). With globalisation and deregulation, there has been an increase in precarity in both the Global North and South. Albeit, in rather different empirical contexts, there has been a decline in TUs. The varieties of unionism literature emerged to address this decline in TUs by examining union strategies ² in the context of globalisation and neoliberal economic policies in western countries (Turner, 2004). As in the varieties of capitalism literature, the varieties of unionism literature argues that unions vary due to cross-national differences in the institutional context of industrial relations, state policies and employer strategies. At the same time, union responses to social, economic and political challenges are also contingent upon the internal structures of unions themselves (Frege & Kelly, 2003, 2004).

In recent years, various country studies have emerged to examine labour organisation and union strategies in varied contexts in Asia. ³ Most studies inadvertently look at these varieties of unionism and strategies of union revitalisation at the level of the nation-state. For instance, see Ford (2020) for Indonesia; Shyam Sundar and Sapkal (2020), for India. However, we draw on primary data based on interviews of leaders in three major TUs in India. In doing so, we are able to see the variety of union perspectives within India. This disaggregation of TU perspectives at the subnational level is a novelty of the article. An analysis of interviews with TUs leadership on the themes—the evolution of the union, labour organisation, worker representation, perspectives on informality, migrant labour and fragmentation in the labour market—reveals that individual union strategies vary on account of their historical origins, ideological underpinnings and relationship with state and the market, in both national and local contexts. These differences, in turn, shape the core values, vision and modus operandi of the three unions under study.

For the purpose of this article, we employ the framework of Frege and Kelly (2003) to analyse strategies of union revitalisation, viz., organising, organisational restructuring, coalition-building, partnerships with employers and political action. This framework is useful in a context where India transitioned from a command economy to a market economy though the latter cannot be approximated to the LME due to complex institutional varieties of worker representation and preponderance of informality in the labour market (Shyam Sundar & Sapkal, 2020). Economic reforms since the 1990s have undermined labour and dented an already struggling TU movement in India. As a result of economic restructuring, the TUs’ familiar membership base—comprising formal-sector industrial workers—has shrunk. The unions have increasingly struggled to retain their bargaining power and aggregate interests of diverse and newly emerged categories (such as piecemeal contractors, home-based workers, gig workers, etc.) of workers (Shyam Sundar, 2002).

Against the backdrop of the TUs’ decline in India in the past few decades, the next section looks at the role played by the disconnect between the TUs and the vast migrant workforce and TUs’ strategies to mitigate it. This specific focus can be attributed to two key factors: (i) Given the large number of migrant workers in India [estimated to have reached over 140 million in 2020 (Rajan et al., 2021)], the exclusion of migrant workers can significantly limit TUs’ reach—and in turn curtail their bargaining power to a great extent; (ii) migrant workers often end up in low-paid, temporary jobs in unregulated sections of the labour market where they can be more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation and can benefit from union protection.

In LMEs, migrant workers are often preferred for their flexibility, which aligns with the competitive market dynamics that characterise these economies. TUs across the world have acknowledged the need to draw more migrant workers into their ambit. In India, this discussion especially came to the foreground after what came to be known as the ‘migrant workers’ exodus’ in 2020—when the Indian government imposed a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and migrants—many of whom were trapped in insecure and precarious jobs—embarked upon often long and treacherous journeys to return home without much support from the government or the TUs (Menon, 2020). The need to close the gulf between migrant workers and TUs has been underscored in union revival literature (Alberti et al., 2013; Holgate, 2013). It has been recognised as an important measure to augment the unions’ bargaining power.

For this part of the analysis, we use the framework encompassing the ‘universalistic versus particularistic approaches’ categorisation introduced by Alberti et al. (2013) and analyse Indian TUs’ outreach strategies for migrant workers. The framework can be seen to be grounded in the framework of intersectionality and essentially helps investigate possible consequences of organising migrant workers around the ‘worker’ identity, the ‘migrant’ identity or the ‘migrant worker’ identity. In our analysis, we examine whether the Indian TUs use—in their attempts to organise migrant workers—the universalistic approach embedded in class primacy or the particularistic approach, which can help operationalise the intersectionality framework, or a combination or an integration of the two approaches. Based on the merits and risks inherent in both approaches, we argue for an approach incorporating integration of the two.

The rest of the article is organised as follows. Post this introductory section, the second section briefly outlines the methodology of the study. The third and the fourth section, based on Indian TU leaders’ accounts, discuss union revitalisation strategies and unions’ perspectives on migrant workers in, particularly, their recruitment, respectively. The fifth section concludes.

Methodology

This analysis relies on the critical appraisal of the existing literature as well as a qualitative primary study that involves semi-structured interviews with three senior leaders from three Indian central trade unions (CTUs): (i) a senior office-bearer from the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), (ii) a senior leader associated with the All India Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) and (iii) a senior representative from the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS). These leaders will be anonymised and referred to with the pseudonyms Chitra (for CITU), Amit (for AICCTU) and Bipin (for BMS), respectively. Owing to their experience and national-level leadership positions, they are presumed to have had a role in the respective unions’ policymaking. As a majority of the Indian central TUs are either centre-, left-of-centre or left-leaning, two of the three unions selected for this exercise are also left-leaning, while the BMS is a right-wing organisation, affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The three organisations, based on their most recent membership numbers available, can be broadly categorised as small (AICCTU with about 2,500,000 registered members), medium-sized (CITU with about 5,700,000 registered members) and large (BMS with about 17,100,000 registered members) CTUs. ⁴ The variation in their sizes, as well as the ideological leanings, is meant to ensure the diversity of viewpoints included in this analysis.

This analysis encompasses various dimensions, including the evolution of unions, perspectives on informality, the historical exclusion of the migrant labour force and the corrective measures used by the TUs as well as the sustainability of these measures. The interview guide of the primary study can be seen in the Appendix.

A comparative strategy analysis was employed to elucidate the nuanced differences in migrant outreach approaches among the three CTUs under study. This involved posing a standardised set of questions to all interviewees with subsequent requests for clarification based on their initial responses. These interviews were then transcribed and translated and the responses relevant to the larger themes in this discussion were clubbed together from the transcripts to facilitate comparative analysis. However, the diverse union affiliations, beliefs, experiences and political orientations of the interviewees have led to markedly different responses (or in some cases, a lack of a direct or relevant response) to identical questions. Due to the inherent variability in responses, instead of a direct juxtaposition of answers to the same questions across interviews, a thematic approach has been adopted for this analysis, wherein relevant segments of responses from various parts of the transcripts have been compiled for discussing specific sub-themes.

Trade Union Strategies

Turner (2004) argues that the labour movement in the Global North—and union revitalisation strategies—that evolved as a response to globalisation, intensified competition, market fundamentalism and neoliberal economic policy—may be classified into two broad categories: efforts that focus on mobilisation and those that focus on the institutional position of reform (Turner, 2004). In India, as it emerges from the TU leaders’ narratives, we find that despite fundamental differences between unions, it is the first set of strategies—of labour mobilisation—that the unions have leaned towards to adapt to the changing role of the market and the state as a consequence of economic reforms and the adoption of the New Economic Policy in 1991. On the other hand, for unions, the second set of institutional and organisational reform strategies has been harder to take on as these require fundamental changes from within.

Before we dive into union strategies per se, it is useful to note that Indian TUs have close associations with political parties that have historically played a role in their evolution and sustenance. In turn, the TUs are strongly divided along political lines, and while unions alone may be powerful, the union movement is fragmented. According to Upadhyaya (2022), the absence of one strong central TU centre has contributed to the multiplicity of unions. This multiplicity of unions is seen as a ‘curse’ to the TUs movement as it adversely affects their bargaining capacity and creates industrial problems (Upadhyaya, 2022, p. 26).

At the same time—as noted by one of the union leaders—almost all TUs are opposed to economic reforms that followed the New Economic Policy adopted in 1991. While it is clear that the three unions under study are opposed to economic reforms and the neoliberal policy framework in general, there appear to be significant differences in their perspectives on the market and the state, and capital and labour.

The left-leaning unions emphasise structural issues and deploy a Marxist vocabulary of class and conflict. The CITU leader, Chitra, notes:

The root cause (of the employment crisis in India) is the type of development. There is an agrarian crisis; people are leaving villages for cities to find jobs, but there is no job creation in urban areas. Everybody is facing the unemployment problem… There are no jobs. Jobs are not being created. Jobs are being lost… So, the type of development… when society is entirely driven by profit; it is not for providing jobs or basic necessities for common people. When the governments think that wealth creators are the corporates and need to be given all these benefits and concessions… they try to cut down the number of workers to reduce wages. The proportion of wages has come down; the proportion of profits is increasing. That is how they want… to cut down on the welfare benefit, all this to basically… (change) the character of the society…. The government expenditure has to increase. But the government is not ready to do that.

On the other hand, the BMS has a rather different stance on the role of the state. It understands the decline of labour and contractualisation of the workforce as ‘a consequence of the LPG—liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation policies’, but, unlike the left unions, has reservations about state intervention. It is not ‘worried about the change of (state) ownership (after privatisation)’, Bipin explains. For them, it does not matter if a firm is public or private, as long as ‘job security, wage security and social security (of the worker) is ensured’. This stand of the union is consistent even while speaking about outreach strategies for the recruitment of migrant workers—elaborated in the next section.

The unions have a fundamentally different perspective on the formalisation–informalisation debate. This has a bearing on the demands placed on the employer and state, and, in turn, their organising strategies for workers. Amit argues, ‘the LPG policies changed the composition of the workforce’, leading to the informalisation of the workforce. Due to the changing policies of the state and its impact on the structure of the workforce, Chitra notes that 75% of CITU’s membership today is from the unorganised sector. Both Amit and Chitra view informality as deliberate state action. Chitra argues:

Informality can be reduced if the labour laws are implemented; if wages are paid, if permanent posts are created, But under the present system, under the neoliberal regime, that will not happen. We don’t think it will happen. Because even in other countries also, where there were all permanent jobs, lifelong guarantee, all these things… Like Japan and European countries, etc. There also, now, informality has increased. So, the system is the reason. Within this, without changing the policies, informality will not come down. Because that (informality) is being promoted by the policies.

At the other end of the spectrum, BMS’s Bipin argues that there has been an increasing formalisation of the workforce and lauds the government’s e-Shram portal that has carried out mass registration of workers in the unorganised sector so as to extend social security and welfare benefits to these workers. For the BMS, the registration of workers implies formalisation. Bipin is of the opinion that given the vastness of the informal sector, the realistic solution can only be extending social security benefits to the informal workers—rather than creating more permanent jobs or expanding the formal sector. On the other hand, the other two unions do not see the registration of workers as synonymous with their formalisation. Chitra argues:

That is not formalisation! Formalisation means having basic protection at the workplace where exist the right to organise, right to collective bargaining and implementation of labour laws… That is what is formalisation. What the government is doing is the opposite….

Organising and Organisational Restructuring

Organising has been the core strategy of union activities in India. The three unions under study have focused on increasing their membership base in a changing labour market and employment scenario in the post-liberalisation period. The pre-liberalisation socialist imagination of the informal sector as a waiting room, and that all workers in the unorganised sector will eventually be absorbed in the organised sector is no longer the dominant discourse among unions. Instead, the TUs’ focus has moved beyond the organised sector so much so that Chitra contends that the bulk of the membership of the TU is mainly from the unorganised sector now is clearly visible in the strikes organised by CITU.

The fragmentation of workers has emerged as a key problem—in organising the workers—that the unions are grappling with. Amit explains:

So, what followed informalisation was the emergence of many categories. It was quite simple earlier with the permanent category. Now, you have temporary, contract, casual, daily wage, guest worker and whatnot. This has happened with the development of capitalism and the introduction of LPG… Now, the trade union movement faces the biggest challenge. And it’s becoming more and more challenging to unionise this new workforce. Then, there are IT workers, gig workers, and platform workers. So many varieties. You need to use different methods to organise them. They all have different service conditions. The labour laws that we have had… they are not applicable in so many places. Workers are outside their ambit.

CITU’s Chitra finds this ‘fragmentation of workers divisive’—a challenge for organising in an empirical context where outsourcing and contract labour have emerged important, and divisions based on permanent and contract workers, on regional and caste lines—with increasing migrant workers—have made organising and going on strikes difficult. She notes:

….they (migrant workers) are isolated and they are kept in isolated places. There are language difficulties, cultural difficulties, And they are prevented from organising. These are all different ways of fragmenting the workers, preventing them from getting united.

At the same time, new forms of organising have emerged, organising is happening differently. For instance, Amit gives the example of the Delhi Transport Corporation, where the old union of permanent workers is now working mainly with contract workers. Retired workers and union leaders started organising new contract workers to form worker solidarities and put forward the demand for the regularisation of contract workers. New forms of organising are also seen as necessary in the case of home-based workers, workers directly working with contractors, where there is no employer–employee relation. In recent decades, another important category of workers is ‘scheme workers’, notes Amit. The millions of ASHA workers, anganwadi workers and mid-day meal workers work under the guise of voluntary work, ironically, to implement the welfare schemes of the state. TUs are successfully organising agitations and strikes on behalf of scheme workers to help them stake a claim in the workforce as regular workers.

In so far as organisational restructuring is concerned, this largely refers to mergers of unions and is a less adopted strategy in the Indian context because of the ideological differences between unions. Historically, the story of the TU movement in India is one of rifts and splits, but there have also been mergers in times of crisis (Upadhyaya, 2022). Through the narratives of union leaders, it emerges that other strategies, such as relationships with employers and coalition-building, were more important than organisational restructuring in the post-liberalisation period marked by political polarisation. Specific strategies undertaken by unions depend upon their political orientation and the ideology of particular unions. This is discussed in the next section.

Partnership with Employer, Coalition-building, Political Action

Unions have varied perspectives towards partnering with employers to strengthen and facilitate workers’ interests. The right-leaning BMS is far more accommodating of working with employers than the left-leaning unions, such as the CITU and AICCTU. It had also taken upon itself to felicitate employers who ‘took care’ of their workers during the COVID-19 lockdown. Bipin notes:

Other trade unions have their class conflict. But BMS has the commitment… we cannot imagine any worker without any industry. Unless and until industries progress, we cannot fulfil the aspirations of the workers.

Just as the BMS aligns itself with the employer, its ideas are also deeply embedded in the discourses on neoliberal capitalism and entrepreneurship. Against the macro context of declining employment, the BMS propagates self-employment and urges workers to be entrepreneurial so as to be their own employers.

On the other hand, left-leaning unions tend to be antagonistic towards employers, leaving little room for partnership. They argue that the contract regime—used by employers—brings down workers’ bargaining power, and, thus, it is all the more important that workers organise against the employer. Particularly in the case of migrant workers, they squarely blame the employers for isolating workers thus making it all the more difficult to organise them. In the left union leaders’ narratives, therefore, the scope for—any kind of—collaboration with employers is quite limited.

The left unions, on the other hand, rely far more on coalition-building, networking and alliances with like-minded organisations and institutions. As with the new social movements, there is a tendency to organise around wider social and political issues that affect the working classes. This view also resonates with Amit, who feels:

The ultimate solution is this—movements. In the absence of the movements, the governments can very easily get away with the things it wants to do. The mass upsurge that is required for strong movements, is not there at the moment. This is a new era (naya daur). This is a long fight.

This particular focus on wider social justice as part of the union’s strategy resonates with the idea of rediscovering the social movement origins of labour—advocated for by some researchers (Heery et al., 2003). We can see the relevance of a broader focus on social justice while employing the intersectionality framework in migrant workers’ recruitment. Holgate (2005, p. 465) explains:

Although trade unionism has always claimed to be concerned with social justice, in practice this has translated into a prioritisation of material gains in the workplace. Wider issues of social justice around equality with respect to ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual preference, for example, have often been of secondary concern, relegated to the sphere of ‘the cultural’ or are conceived as being issues ‘beyond the workplace’.

Chitra, too, emphasises the importance of social movements in strengthening class consciousness. She says:

There is fragmentation of the labour force on the basis of religion, caste, and region. These are all difficulties in creating that class consciousness. The workers identify themselves as a particular caste. So, what we have to do is first, they have to identify themselves as workers. And their interests are the same. That is what we are trying. But given the situation, in our country, it is a very difficult thing.

Chitra believes that social movements can help mitigate divisions created to weaken the labour force and let a collective consciousness emerge. She cites the example of the farmers’ movement [launched in 2020 to demand the rollback of now-repealed three farm laws] and the participation of a large number of farmers and agricultural workers from diverse faiths [Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs] in the protests—especially in Northwestern India.

The nature of ‘political action’ by unions is closely intertwined with the unions’ relationship with the market and the state, and, in turn, the working relationships these institutions have with the unions. In the post-liberalisation period, although unions’ membership is increasing, their bargaining power has declined significantly. Amit notes:

…the enviable bargaining power enjoyed by the trade union movement – which it had with a large permanent workforce – is missing today. But that (old, permanent) workforce is fading rapidly. A large section of it, to tell you frankly, is on the verge of retirement. So, you can’t expect that kind of strength and militancy at this age… Now we have to see how we bring in young workers into the unions’ fold. … There are newer issues that different workers are facing. But the workforce is unorganised, it is replaceable. Then, our bargaining power is weaker.

To address their weak bargaining power, time and again, TUs have come together with one another, as well as formed alliances with other social organisations and movements as discussed earlier. In particular, in recent years, several successful strikes have been organised in this model to protest against government policies. However, it may be noted that differences exist between unions, and the BMS did not participate in the strikes called by the CTUs, against the economic policies of the current political dispensation. Overall, BMS’s strategy vis-à-vis organising workers seems to be envisioning cooperation among the state, capital and workers—rather than ‘politicisation’ of workers’ issues.

Political action has also tended to be pro-capital and facilitated by the state. The recent labour codes of the government are an example in point, Amit explains the shift in the labour regulation regime:

The labour codes will finish all the boards. The government has started the e-shram portal. What do you need that for when you have so many boards? They want to unify everything and keep a single board now. The one strongest board we have had is the beedi workers’ board. These workers have largely remained in the unorganised sector. Now the board is not functional anymore; it has become defunct.

Trade Unions and Migrant Workers

The Backdrop of the Migrant–Union Interaction

To make sense of the dynamic between the Indian TUs and migrant workers, we may need to go a little deeper and understand the setting in which they interact—shaped significantly by neoliberal policies of the contemporary globalised world. The new economic era that followed India’s transition to liberalised economy in the 1990s witnessed a drastic transformation of the labour market—in terms of profile and composition—with increased legitimacy obtained by the ‘flexibility’ school of thought (Agarwala, 2019). With the shrinking blue-collar workforce—believed to be a counterweight to the large capital and a precondition to strong unions (Castles, 2018)—TUs struggled to organise the new and diverse categories of workers (Shyam Sundar, 2011).

Shyam Sundar (2011) explains that historically, the unions concentrated on the dominant section of the workforce—male, full-time, regular, native, blue-collar workers employed in large-scale factories. They paid little or no attention to women, contingent (temporary, casual, contract), young, migrant workers and workers in small establishments and the informal sector when they were at their strongest. The vulnerable segments, such as casual migrant workers, enjoyed little or no employment security and had no stable place of work. Hence, investment in union activity made little economic sense to them, according to his analysis. TUs, too, avoided them as ‘unionisation is not easy and the conventional organisational strategies did not suit them’(Shyam Sundar, 2011, p. 22). This helped produce a hierarchisation within the workforce, which seems to have both stemmed from and resulted in an antipathy between different categories of workers—native versus migrant workers, permanent versus ‘irregular’ workers, etc. By being complicit in this hierarchisation, unions often ended up aligning their strategy with the approach of political players and the state governments—who bank heavily for electoral gains on the so-called concerns over and promises for the local populations’ welfare—at the cost of pitting the native workers against the migrants. A significant consequence of this historical neglect is the erosion of trust among migrant workers and other marginalised groups.

Migration, as a process, too can be seen to be helpful in the neoliberal order to provide the desired flexibility—in the absence of effective protections and weakening TUs. Globally, in the neoliberal climate, there has been a considerable increase in the migration of workers. According to the World Migration Report 2022, there are around 281 million international migrants in the world. Compare this with India, where the total number of internal migrants stood at 453.6 million in 2011, with an increase of 45% compared to 2001 (Rajan et al., 2021). The number is estimated to have reached a whopping 600 million in 2020—with the migrant workforce making up 140 million (Rajan, 2022).

Migrant workers tend to end up in low-paid jobs—sometimes in unregulated sections of the labour market—and are often segregated from the native workers. They are vulnerable to considerable exploitation and abuse in their precarious jobs and they have typically not benefited from union protection (Alberti et al., 2013). While often TUs can be helpless when it comes to reaching out to the migrant workforce, they can be plain apathetic as well. Empirical studies (see Raj & Axelby, 2019) have pointed out the nativist bias among the rank and file of the TUs when their membership comprises mostly native regular workers.

Migrant workers’ jobs may be temporary, accommodation is then temporary, and so is the source of their livelihood (Breman, 2010). This uncertainty shapes the decisions of both the migrants and the unions.

Against the backdrop of the proliferation of informalisation and contractualisation, we can see that TUs have not quite succeeded in accommodating the interests of migrant workers and in forging intra-class solidarities in India. This came to the fore, especially during the lockdown announced in 2020 with the spread of COVID-19. A document adopted by the CITU in its secretariat meeting in August 2021 acknowledged the efforts made by the state committees to provide relief to migrant workers. However, it also noted that the efforts could not be consolidated organisationally by maintaining contact with the migrant workers. It read:

We have not paid much attention to migrant workers’ issues from the beginning itself, although they constitute a substantial section of the country’s industrial workforce, both in the organised sector and also in the unorganised sector. Barring a few exceptions, in most of the places and sectors throughout the country, migrant workers could not be involved effectively in the mainstream trade union movement, including by us.

Media reports lamented the low penetration of unions in the informal sector and posited that it has led to migrant workers’ inability to assert themselves as an organised political and economic force (Menon, 2020). While the Indian TUs’ response vis-à-vis organisation of migrant workers was more pronounced after the crisis witnessed during the pandemic—with unions opting for the launch or revival of migrant-specific branches/units in a number of states—the unions around the world have increasingly recognised in the past few years that in order to protect their members’ interests and to challenge levels of exploitation, there is a need to draw migrant workers into union membership (Holgate, 2013).

Universalistic and Particularistic Approaches

While understanding TUs’ attempts at reaching out to migrant workers, it is important to remember that the latter is not a homogeneous category or a group that can be or needs to be shifted from under one umbrella (migrant) to another broader one (worker). Hyman (2007) points out that how unions respond to external and internal challenges is conditioned by their ability to assess opportunities for intervention, anticipate rather than merely react to changing circumstances, frame coherent policies and implement those effectively. A thorough understanding of the workforce that they are to deal with thus becomes pertinent.

To unpack the category of migrant workers, Tapia and Alberti (2019) argue for the use of the intersectionality framework as migrants, just for being migrants, do not experience the labour market in the same way. It is important to note that migrants are active agents and not mere recipients of integration policies or targets of union mobilisation strategies. At the same time, Mooney (2016) warns against starting with identity-based constructions while using the intersectionality lens because the complex intersection of multiple identities can be difficult to disentangle. This underlines the importance of embracing fluidity while configuring organisational strategies for migrant workers—with an understanding of categories as ‘non-static’ (Glenn, 2004). The exercise of curating an approach that can use categories as ‘anchor points’ to make sense of the lived experiences of the migrant workers while also not reducing them to a single overriding category can be an intricate exercise for the TUs.

In the recent past, unions have primarily marketed themselves as ‘a friend at work’ (Fine & Holgate, 2014) to help negotiate wages, terms and conditions on behalf of the workers. However, workers are aware of the drastically curtailed power of the TUs, and they know that the employers have gained the whip hand in employment relationships (Fine & Holgate, 2014). Can the TUs, in this case, frame their role as a friend ‘at’ as well as ‘beyond’ work for the migrant workers by expanding the scope of their support?

Alberti et al. (2013), in their study of UK-based TUs, look at the newer approaches employed by the latter while attempting to recruit more migrant workers. They use a broad classification to make sense of their outreach strategies—universalistic and particularistic approaches. A universalistic approach is rooted in the presumed primacy of class rather than an understanding of the intersections of different forms of discrimination. Alberti et al. (2013) point to the debates that came up globally around the shift in orientation towards identity politics in the 1960s and address the claim that social and cultural issues set groups of workers against each other (Hobsbawm, 1996). The solution that many unions seem to have devised is to shift the focus completely away from the social, cultural and other types of differences and hyperfocus on the presumed/supposed unifier—the working class.

Alberti et al. (2013) however, question this underlying presupposition that there was one collective identity in the first place, which was universally defined. Adhering to this collective identity of a worker would require individuals to set aside their other identities (gender, ethnicity, caste, religion, sexuality, disability as well as type of employment) while pursuing homogeneous class interests. It can be argued that this approach has largely not worked for the TUs across the world in the past few decades—considering their shrinking membership and the large number of workers worldwide who have remained outside the ambit of the unions.

The raison d’etre of the intersectionality framework can be found in the argument that discourses are typically shaped to respond to one identity or the other (Crenshaw, 1991). For our discussion, the migrant or the worker. The TUs’ sole focus on class—to the exclusion of markers such as ethnicity—fails to uncover the myriad of social processes that position the workers (Holgate et al., 2005). This is a grave limitation of the universalistic approach which foregrounds class politics and frames the identities of workers in an inadequate manner.

On the other hand, the particularistic approach can be helpful in operationalising the intersectionality framework. With this approach, the TUs would look at workers as heterogeneous social groups that encounter intersecting and complex dimensions of inequality that need to be understood in a non-cumulative way (Alberti et al., 2013). It challenges the class primacy and use of the ‘worker first’ persuasion by the TUs as the key guiding light. The particularistic approach entails understanding the lives of migrant workers not just as either migrants or workers, but as people whose lived experiences are ‘an interesting combination of social and economic inequalities where power relations cannot be neatly packaged’ (Alberti et al., 2013, p. 4136). The particularistic approach prompts investigation of the multiple identities of migrant workers as well as the fluidity of these identities—rather than aiming to simply and only incorporate them into the broader ‘worker’ group.

In the comparison between the two broad approaches—universalistic and particularistic—the latter can arguably have more positive implications for the inclusion of migrant workers in an organised workforce. However, with the particularistic approach, TUs may run the risk of overemphasising one specific category such as ethnic identity or migration status—potentially divorced from the identity of a ‘worker’. Alberti et al. (2013) suggest, based on their study of UK-based TUs’ outreach campaigns, that while dealing with community-specific (rather than workplace-specific) issues faced by migrant workers, TUs might be perceived as ‘service providers’ in the eyes of the workers. Such a perception may prevent the active participation of migrant workers in the activity of the branch and pull the focus away from the fundamental need to have a formidable force that is a united workforce. Alberti et al. (2013), therefore, point to the integration of the universalistic and particularistic approaches which entails acknowledging the diversity among the workers and employing the intersectionality framework to understand their specific needs—without de-emphasising the ‘worker’ identity.

The integration of the two approaches can also be linked with the attempts to revive or rediscover the ‘social movement’ origins of labour discussed in the previous section—by redefining union as a mobilising structure stimulating activism and generating campaigns for the workplace as well as wider social justice (Heery et al., 2003).

Indian Trade Unions’ Strategies

The interviews conducted with the senior officials of the three national TUs in India depict the extent of the diversity of approaches employed while recruiting migrant workers. While all of them acknowledge their history of disconnect with the migrant labour force, their strategies for closing this gap—especially after the migrants’ exodus during the COVID-19 lockdown—are distinct.

Bipin states that the right-wing union does not espouse the ‘class conflict’ theory unlike other—mostly left-leaning—unions. It believes in and aims for harmonious coexistence of the workers and ‘udyog parivaar’ ⁵ or the industry. He speaks of a similarly congenial equation between the native and migrant workers in the workplace across states and underplays any tension between the two groups. The BMS does not look at the particularities and heterogeneity of the migrant workers’ issues specifically—even when Bipin admits to struggling with unionising amid diverse forms of employment and with varied categories of workers. The union does not seem to take into consideration how the migrant workers’ identity as migrants may affect the employment relation they are part of. Even as Bipin concedes that the pandemic brought to the migrant workers the much-needed focus emphasises the need to look at workers’ welfare ‘in collectivities’ and notes:

We do not have different stands for locals and migrants. We want to ensure that there should be wage security, job security, and social security for all. We have not bifurcated to say there should be a special provision for locals and other provisions for migrant workers.

The BMS sees migration as a ‘natural’ consequence of the ‘country’s progress’. Interestingly, Bipin admits that the migrants end up doing precarious, low-end jobs, which the locals themselves may not be ready to take up. Nonetheless, the BMS uses a universalistic approach and employs an umbrella strategy as mentioned in the previous section—demand for wage security, job security and social security for all—which may prove to be quite limited as it does not take into consideration how unequally difficult or easy it may be for different groups to achieve this golden standard and why.

BMS’s approach does not aim to target the specific vulnerabilities that arise from migrants’ ethnic, linguistic and cultural alienness—lacking the intersectionality lens and the explicit intent to be socially inclusive. The case of the right-wing union is especially peculiar as its universalistic approach is not tied to the ‘worker’ identity and the idea of class unity that the unions would typically rely on to strengthen their bargaining power, but as discussed in the previous section, is rooted in the discourses on neoliberal capitalism and an imagination of the harmonious coexistence of the state, capital and labour.

Amit, on the other hand, speaks of the unions’ targeted effort to reach out to sector-specific groups of workers [scheme workers, construction workers and agricultural labourers among them] based on their workplace-based issues.

Amit says that the AICCTU is now figuring out ways to mobilise young and contractual workers who continue to replace the permanent ones. He points to the need to organise migrant workers and work towards their social integration with the native workers. In AICCTU’s strategy, there is an emphasis on locating the workers in their new environments and extending support depending on their situation. He explains:

We have to integrate them more with the local workers. And there need to be strong networks of the unions. If workers from our social base are going out for work, we can try to connect them with the union branch at their destination. And we have to look at the specific issues they might be facing there locally. We can protect and organise migrant workers through social integration.

AICCTU’s approach can be categorised as particularistic; however, it is not divorced from class politics and the significance of ‘worker’ identity. The task of inculcating class consciousness is equally important for the left-wing union as it aims to pay attention to the other identity markers of the migrant workers that may contribute to their alienation from labour organisation. Amit, on the one hand, stops at the official demand for social and legal protection of the migrants from abuse while talking about the union’s strategy. On the other hand, he speaks of instances which show that AICCTU has been trying to embed itself in the lives and environments of the migrant workers by taking up issues outside their workplaces and showing up even in the most personal and poignant moments. In cases of the untimely death of migrant workers, apart from fighting for compensation, the union has, in a few instances, shouldered the responsibility of sending the body back to their homes in a dignified manner and arranging cremations, according to Amit. While these are only small steps, the idea is to build a rapport with the migrants and, with their inclusion, pave the way for ‘mass upsurge’.

As discussed in the previous section, with Chitra’s emphasis on the ‘worker’ identity and class consciousness, we can infer that CITU’s approach until the pandemic could have been characterised as universalistic. However, the union adopted a particularistic approach in the immediate aftermath of the migrants’ exodus during the pandemic. CITU launched migrant workers’ unions in states like West Bengal and Karnataka to mobilise out-bound and in-bound workers, respectively. The union planned on launching similar units in other Indian states, starting from Maharashtra. The aim was to utilise the connections that the union had been able to form during the lockdown crisis and bring more migrant workers into the fold. The strategy at this juncture was to address the specific issues faced by the migrant workforce, in or beyond the workplace. Similar to AICCTU, CITU also took up issues going beyond the workplace—such as evictions and sanitation facilities, among others. However, Chitra clarifies that the migrant-specific branch of the union is a temporary measure employed by CITU. She explains:

We believe that actually, organising migrant workers as migrant workers will not help. Because they have to be organised at their factory level – workplace level. They cannot be divided again as migrant and local workers. That is a divisive thing. But at the same time, temporarily, because we developed so many contacts, [we decided] to bring them all under one umbrella and then take up their specific workplace issues and try to organise them at their workplace along with the local workers. That is the strategy we have adopted.

While class primacy still dictates the overarching positioning of CITU, it has not stopped the union from resorting to targeted measures to accommodate migrant workers’ specific characteristics. For instance, Chitra talks about using multilingual pamphlets to reach out to migrant workers. When they are physically segregated from the natives, the union members have launched awareness campaigns in specific places—such as markets—frequented by migrants. This suggests that while the union, in its official stance, foresees an eventual shift to the universalistic approach from the particularistic measures, it is well aware of the heterogeneity of the social groups it is dealing with. While it attempts to be flexible when it comes to accommodating specific vulnerabilities of migrant workers, its inherent preference seems to be class politics-based mobilisation and a return to the much-familiar and well-practised universalistic approach.

To sum up, Indian TUs have been increasingly faced with the dilemma of whether to mobilise migrant workers based on equal or special treatment. The interviews with the three union leaders reveal that there is a diversity of approaches in their strategies. While class primacy guides the two left-wing TUs considered for this study, it is not operational in the same way as the strategies of CITU and AICCTU. The BMS, on the other hand, chooses to use the ‘equal treatment’ strategy—albeit devoid of class politics—and contends that universal security measures can ensure the mitigation of the migrants’ vulnerabilities.

Alberti et al. (2013) emphasise the need to overcome the false dichotomy between work and migration issues and work towards integrating the universalistic and particularistic approaches—something we glimpse in the strategy elaborated by AICCTU. While the union believes in the anchoring of the class consciousness, it realises the need to pay attention to and address the specific vulnerabilities of migrant workers in their environments. AICCTU’s organisational strategy entails mobilising migrant workers as migrants as well as workers and strengthening the labour movement as a social movement by ensuring the inclusion of diverse workers’ groups.

CITU, on the other hand, sees value in the social movement origins of the TUs, but it is wary of reifying the existing divisions (native versus migrant workers) and undermining workers’ unity. The union might find it advantageous not to envision an immediate transition to a purely universalistic approach. Instead, it could explore the possibility of integrating this approach with the particularistic one, or, at the very least, allow for flexibility in its decision-making process.

The BMS seems to acknowledge the migrant workers’ vulnerable position but fails to see the additional barriers faced by migrant workers while exercising their bargaining power. To be able to represent diverse categories of workers, the right-wing union may have to consider making its structure more porous and devise methods to accommodate the interests of migrant workers.

Conclusion

Drawing from the varieties of capitalism and unionism literature, this article delves into Indian TUs’ responses to the rapidly changing labour landscape and unions’ decline in the aftermath of India’s transition to a market economy. This analysis reveals Indian Tus’ prevailing inclination towards worker mobilisation and membership expansion. However, their strategies vary depending on their ideological orientation, political affiliations and perceptions of the factors contributing to union decline.

Employing Frege and Kelly’s framework (2003) pertaining to union revitalisation strategies, we argue that while Indian unions have primarily concentrated on expanding their membership and organising more effectively, they have struggled to address the needs of diverse and new worker categories and the fragmentation of the labour force. The TUs’ have been compelled to look at ‘new forms of organising’ to be able to reach out to the vast groups of unorganised sector and migrant workers—who have traditionally largely remained outside TUs’ ambit. While the restructuring of organisations by way of mergers, etc., is rarely a strategy Indian TUs have opted for in the past few decades, partnering with employers was revealed to be preferred by the only right-wing union, BMS. Divorced from class politics, BMS envisions a collaborative and harmonious coexistence of the state, labour and capital.

Left-leaning unions’ (CITU and AICCTU) strategies are anchored in class politics and they often maintain an antagonistic relationship with employers. They typically mobilise workers against employers’ anti-labour practices such as contractualisation, workers’ exploitation and resistance to unionisation.

Interestingly, while the right-wing union resists the politicisation of workers’ issues, we found that the two left unions more frequently opt for coalition-building and political action strategies. CITU’s and AICCTU’s strategies involve mobilisation around wider social and political issues. This particular focus on wider social justice as part of the union’s strategy resonates with the idea of rediscovering the social movement origins of labour prevalent in the union revitalisation literature.

The unions’ alignment with or detachment from social movements also plays a pivotal role in operationalising intersectionality and shaping their outreach strategies for India’s extensive and hitherto largely unorganised migrant workforce. We employ Alberti et al. (2013), universalistic versus particularistic approach framework to make sense of the Indian TU’s strategies.

Our interviews with senior union leaders reveal that the left-leaning CITU and AICTTU have historically employed a class-based universalistic approach in recruiting migrant workers. However, in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown, these unions have diversified their strategies, incorporating a particularistic approach. They recognise the significance of migrant workers’ ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences and aim to extend their support beyond workplace boundaries, addressing various issues in their social environments. We contend that by merging these approaches with class politics, the unions can ensure an approach—backed by a solid theoretical foundation—as well as greater inclusion and sustainable recruitment of migrant workers. We argue that the left-leaning unions need to adopt a more dynamic decision-making and strategising approach, moving away from a strict preference for the universalistic model.

The right-wing union, on the other hand, fails to see the additional barriers faced by migrant workers while exercising their bargaining power. To be able to represent diverse categories of workers, BMS may have to consider making its structure more porous and devise methods to accommodate the interests of migrant workers.

Finally, instead of solely relying on Marxist terminologies such as class consciousness and class conflict (as espoused by organisations like CITU) or embracing the Savarna vocabulary associated with concepts like Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (The world is one family) as often upheld by BMS, it becomes imperative to forge a different identity for workers. This identity could be founded upon the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of India, particularly emphasising the provisions laid out in Articles 39–41—pertaining to the right to an adequate means of livelihood, equal wages for equivalent work, prevention of concentration of wealth and means of production, among others. By drawing inspiration from these foundational documents, the aim should be to transcend traditional divisions and create a more inclusive, accessible and equitable framework that fosters unity and solidarity among all workers.