FIELD VISITS
RASHTRIYA MILL MAZDOOR SANGH
The first visit that we made was to Rashtriya Mazdur Mill Sabh’s head office in Parel, Mumbai. The aim of our visit was to gain some knowhow about the trade union movement in India and how it functions in current times. The secretary made us go through a QA round (Question & Answer) with some of the executive in charge, among them was The Director, The General Secretary and some other.
Talking about the genesis of RMMS, we came to know that RMMS was founded in mumbai in 1946 by some congress leaders and since then is affiliated to Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC).
During peak years of textiles business in Mumbai, RMMS was one of the major Unions and had strong support..After the 1984 all mills collapsed and RMMS became just another sundry union in the Mumbai labor union circle. During 1982 there were strikes being held all over Mumbai and a major role was played by Dr.Datta Saman whose dynamism as a Leader was unmatched and even though he was a medical practitioner by profession had great concerns for these low scale employees associated with the Mills and made great contributions and finally was assassinated. His dynamism is talked over everywhere in the Trade Union Movements all over India.
It also came to our knowledge that RMMS had members from all the Mills that were working in the country, in Mumbai alone it was told to be about 64 Mills employing about 4 lakh employees during those days. It was around 1982 when the Mills started to shut down giving rise to a huge unrest among the employees who were working in these mills as their jobs were getting lost.
During our interaction it also came to our knowledge that RMMS functions on the Gandhian Philosophy. RMMS also runs a Labour Institue by the name Ambedkar Labour Institute where programmes for workers education are highly emphasized so as to make them more self-dependant and ready to face challenges.
We were told that lots of cases are still pending in Courts regarding the redressal of grievances that the Mill workers had to face during the shutdown era.
Lastly we got to know that RMMS’s current functioning has become quite weak and is reaching towards its end as only 10 Mills are left and the Membership has also gone down to 10,000 members only.
Finally the nut-shell of the visit could be summarized by saying that it equipped us with a new perspective and gave us a better understanding of the essence of Trade Unions around us and is also helping us a lot in relating ourselves to the Course of Globalisation and Labour that we are pursuing here at TISS.
CENTRAL RAILWAY MAZDOOR SANGH
Students of Globalisation and Labour, T.I.S.S, visited the Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh on the 25th of August,2008, where they had the opportunity to interact with the Treasurer.
The Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh(CRMS) is one of two recognised unions in the Central Zone of the Indian Railways, the other being National Railway Mens Union.
The interaction familiarised students with the constitution of the union and various social security schemes of the Railways, amongst other things. Mr. X spoke about some of the current concerns of the union, such as outsourced work and gave a glimpse into some of the challenges faced by the CRMS and other unions.