RESOLVE LABOUR UNREST WITHOUT CAUSING DISRUPTION

THE month-long workers' strike at the Samsung plant in Tamil Nadu is reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, when employee protests were a constant irritant in the country's industrial hubs.

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With the politically connected labour unions always in a battle-mode, such strikes in the pre-liberalisation era led to the downfall of several manufacturing hubs in the country such as Kanpur, Kolkata and Punjab.

Even the textile mills of Mumbai were once notorious for their militant labour unions. We now know how some of these manufacturing hubs have been in complete disarray as promoters of companies shifted their base to relatively more business-friendly centres such as Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka - even though these states had their own share of labour problems.