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Paper short abstract:

Based on a recent ILO report on The Social Life of Industrial Disputes, this presentation reflects on how workers articulate their own claims towards social justice from the shopfloor, through filing industrial grievances. The analysis maps grievances and reflects on labour regimes and conflict.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation is based on a recent ILO project and report on The Social Life of Industrial Disputes (Mezzadri and Sehgal, 2023). The study traces the social biography of industrial conflicts and explores the links between regional labour regimes in the Indian garment industry and the evolution of industrial relations from a worker-centred lens. It analyses the features and outcome of industrial grievances filed by workers in three garment clusters, Gurugram (National Capital Region), Bengaluru (Karnataka) and Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu). By centring workers’ action, the study analyses how workers articulate their own claims towards social justice from the shopfloor, even in the absence of mobilisations. Through a labour-centred approach to industrial relations focusing on workers’ experiences, and by investigating workers’ industrial grievances either filed individually or through unions, the study reconstructs the ‘social life’ of industrial relations as drawn by labour. The evidence discussed here is based on the study of 25 industrial disputes in each location, totalling 75 disputes. The analysis shows that disputes can be formal, semiformal, and informal, individual, or collective; yet, different typologies intersect and are better understood as placed on a spectrum, where conciliation and litigation processes interplay. The trajectory disputes may follow depends on these intersections and interplays and shape a complex legal chain, made of many nodes involving different legal offices and entities. The study of workers’ disputes reveals great regional variation in labour abuse, also along gendered lines. Yet, it also shows commonalities, particularly with reference to illegal terminations and wage-theft.