New Delhi: Trade unions have a new agenda - bringing India's BPO sector under their realm. BPO workers have plush offices, fat pay packets and five-day working weeks.
This along with weekend parties and an HR department that pampers them through and through make sure that employees don't feel the need to be affiliated with trade unions.
However, trade unions have a different story to tell. They say that odd working hours, a stressful work life, health hazards, fringe benefit tax, the power of collective bargaining, women’s security and psychological pressures are grievances that require BPO workers to stand up as an union against the management and strike work.
Most readers at ibnlive.com feel that trade unions will not find any takers in the BPO industry.
Says a reader Anand Krishnan, "Trade unionism flourishes in a setting where there are no grievance redressal mechanisms in place for employees and where managements have an anti-employee mindset. Any BPO, if anti-employee will not survive with the manpower demand-supply inequation. With the kind of opportunities for young educated graduates that BPOs offer, I am sure this would find no takers."
He adds that BPOs have fuelled an unparalleled economic boom that trade unions want a share in.
C Rakesh Gopal agrees and says, "Trade unions are supposed to fight for employees who are deceived by the management by false promises. In a BPO industry the employees are well aware about their work culture and style of working (the extra hours of working and other aspects) and they are ready to face it.
Says T Vijayaragghavan, "I was wondering why this sector has been out of the purview of the trade unions. But now, now these so called champions of work have started blowing the conches. They themselves are not flourishing and will not allow others to flourish as well. That's why despite the fact that we have some of the best brains in the world, we come last in everything."
Others like Kasinath equate trade unionism with communism and say that Indians like to raise the red flag at every opportunity.
"Communism died a long time ago in its country of birth but its soul still lives on in India. These people have no work and therefore the only thing they can do effectively is to raise demonstrations and the red flag. If they can't think forward, then let them not take the nation backward. For most part unionism has achieved little for the workers while creaming the pockets of the union leaders."
"It seems that the country is hell bent on destroying and bannishing itself into the dark ages. Trade Unions should be completely outlawed like terroist groups, for they are full of corrupt officials whose only aim is to squeeze money out of business people. They explot weak and outdated labour laws for their selfish gains."
However, there are others readers who are strongly in favour of trade unions.
Says Razi, "I think its a great step. BPOs exploit their workers and this comes from my own experince of working for a BPO where employess are given hellish treatement."
"With more then 70 per cent of the workforce working in BPOs being fresh graduates with very little knowledge about their rights, it becomes all the more important that their be one body which can check that they are not exploited," says Sumit.
Adds Chiru, "If key issues such as abuse from outsourcing countries and media are a cause for concern, then the industry needs to have a forum."
However, he also says that seeing as BPO employees get fringe benefit tax and have the best of working conditions - things which no other industry offers - then the sector should not be forced to join the industry.
Most readers feel that trade unions want to earn money through membership fees that they will get by bringing the BPO sector under its wing. They do not want to save 'harassed employees'.
They feel that having a trade union may also hamper foreign investments as foreign companies may think twice before investing into anything that would prove a hassle to handle in the future.
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