Towards a [Re] Orientation of Labour: Examining key issues and Strategies related to the Labour Movement in India

Delhi-NCR

Archiving Labour in Delhi-NCR

In collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, CEC is currently engaged in a archiving initiative to capture the various facets of labour, for the last four decades. This includes reports, pamphlets, booklets published by unions and others, photographs, interviewing movement leaders and capturing the socio-economic changes in the region across the last four decades through oral interviews, with union leaders, workers and scholars.

The rationale behind the initiative lies in the fact that this region saw significant changes in the socio-economic and demographic profile over the decades. While many small industries deemed ‘polluting’ were transferred out of Delhi in the 1990’s (which in turn had created one of the most significant resistance movements in the region in the decade), the larger NCR region also saw the emergence of a number of industrial hubs in the recent times. In many ways, the transformation of the Delhi-NCR region symbolizes the changes that the entire country has been going through for the past few decades and archiving it would produce crucial knowledge regarding the transformation process.

Labour Dialogues on Informal Labour

In collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung- South Asia, CEC has been organizing a series of Labour Dialogues on the broad theme of informal labour. The idea behind the Labour Dialogues has been to investigate the way the various trade unions, labour activists and civil society organisations in India have historically understood, deployed and mobilised the category of labour; the way the organised trade union movement has responded to the changed circumstances and the strategies they came to adopt; the various constraints and possibilities confronting the trade union movement today; their attitude towards unorganised labour & their actual practices for unorganised labour. The project seeks to produce crucial knowledge necessary for a reorientation of the labour movement to confront today’s challenges.

So far, 4 Labour Dialogues have been organized on the following themes:

1. Covid19 and the Apparent Oddities in Articulation of Migrant Workers’ Rights
2. Addressing the Pandemic: the Labour Perspective
3. Women and Work in the time of Pandemic: Challenges and the Way Forward
4. Organising Gig Workers in the Pandemic: Challenges and the Way Forward
5. Labour Law Reforms Today: Issues and Challenges

You can watch the recordings of our previous Labour Dialogues at the official CEC Youtube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCROabO20hTLV3tYzbS1zHbA