Exploitative enslavement

Exploitative enslavement: AB Sivakumar’s ‘Folly of hiring technical contract staff’ (November 2) brings into focus a grey area in HR management in all sectors in India. There is real confusion at the highest level about regular employment,...

EXPLOITATIVE ENSLAVEMENT
AB Sivakumar’s ‘Folly of hiring technical contract staff’ (November 2) brings into focus a grey area in HR management in all sectors in India. There is real confusion at the highest level about regular employment, ‘outsourcing of work’ and contract work assignments. While contract labour may be the continuation of ‘bonded labour’ practised in farms, factories and mines, large-scale outsourcing of work was an antidote to militant trade unionism which fought mechanisation and introduction of IT in the 1970s and 1980s.
Policymakers did not take the long and tough route of counselling the trade union leadership and taking the workforce into confidence by assuring them that IT is not about job elimination but about improving efficiency through skill development. They adopted a shortcut by encouraging ‘outsourcing’ of IT-enabled work to new generation companies with a modern outlook on luring, hiring and firing. The social cost of the sagging morale among workers in the organised sector and the creation of an inefficient and socially insecure workforce is a subject for study.
MG Warrier
Mumbai

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