Which one of the following explains the ‘citizen concept’ of labour?

Correct — C, (c) Labour has a right to be consulted in regard to the terms and conditions under which they are supposed to work. Industrial relations writing sets out several rival concepts of labour, each of them an answer to one question: in the eyes of the enterprise, what is a worker? The citizen concept answers that a worker is a member of the industrial community with standing in it. A citizen is not bought, is not acted upon by a natural law, and is not fitted into a mechanism; a citizen holds rights, and the first of those rights is a voice in the rules under which he has to live. Carried into the workplace, that becomes a right to be consulted about the terms and conditions of employment, which is exactly what option (c) says and what no other option on this item says.

The reading test here is short and it travels well beyond this question. Only one of the four options is written as a right held BY labour. Options (a), (b) and (d) all describe labour from outside: as something employers regard in a particular way, as something an economic law acts upon, as a component inside a machine. Sort the four options by their grammatical subject and the citizen option separates itself before you have recalled any theory at all.

Indian law has written that consultative right into statute step by step, and this paper’s own labour block shows the trail. Article 43A of the Constitution, inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, directs that the State ’shall take steps, by suitable legislation or in any other way, to secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings, establishments or other organisations engaged in any industry’. Section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 requires a Works Committee, made up of representatives of the employer and of the workmen, in an establishment employing one hundred or more workmen. Section 5(1) of the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946 turns consultation into a condition of certification: on receiving the employer’s draft standing orders the Certifying Officer must forward a copy ’to the trade union, if any, of the workmen, or where there is no such trade union, to the workmen’, with a notice inviting their objections within fifteen days. The terms and conditions of work do not become binding until the workmen have had that hearing. That is the citizen concept in operative form.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Labour is largely regarded by the employers as operating organizations in industry. — This is labour seen entirely through the employer’s eyes: the sentence has employers as its subject and labour as the thing they regard in a certain way. Whatever weight is given to the phrase ’operating organizations in industry’, the option makes labour a functional element of the firm’s operating apparatus, valued for the work it performs. That is the instrumental view the citizen concept was formulated against. Notice that nothing in the sentence gives labour anything: it grants no right, no claim and no voice, so it cannot be a statement of what citizenship means.
• (b)Labour is affected by the law of demand and supply. — This states the commodity concept, the oldest of the set and the one classical economics bequeathed to industrial relations. On that view labour is bought and sold like any other article of trade, its price settled where demand meets supply, and the employer owes the worker nothing beyond the agreed wage. It is a real concept and it is squarely tested here, but it is the opposite pole from the citizen concept: a commodity has a price, a citizen has rights. Modern labour policy has explicitly repudiated it — the Declaration of Philadelphia adopted by the International Labour Conference in 1944 opens its statement of principles with ’labour is not a commodity’ — which is worth remembering because the same declaration is the subject of another item in this paper’s labour run.
• (d)Labour is a cog in the machine. — This is the machine concept, sometimes written as the cog-in-the-machine view: labour is one factor of production among others, interchangeable, to be arranged for maximum output like any other part of the plant. It is the view that scientific management made famous and that the human relations school reacted against. Like option (a) it describes labour as an object rather than as a holder of rights, and it is the harshest of the three wrong options, which is why an examiner keeps it on the page: a candidate who is scanning for the option that sounds most modern rejects it instantly and then has to choose between the remaining three on their content rather than their tone.

The concepts of labour are a ladder of answers to the question of what standing a worker has inside an enterprise, and each rung carries a different set of obligations for the employer. At the bottom is the commodity concept: labour is an article of trade whose price is fixed by demand and supply. Next is the machine or factor-of-production concept: labour is a component to be arranged for output. Above those sit the goodwill and paternalistic concepts, in which the employer does more than the contract requires, but does it as a gift rather than in answer to a claim — welfare flows downward and can be withdrawn. The humanitarian concept treats the worker as a human being with needs. The citizen concept is different in kind rather than in degree, because it is the first rung on which the worker holds something the employer cannot take back: standing in the enterprise, and with it a right to be heard on the terms of his own work. Above it lies the partnership concept, in which the worker shares in decisions and in results. The practical machinery of the citizen concept is the machinery of workers’ participation: works committees, joint management councils, safety and canteen committees, worker directors, and the statutory right to object to draft standing orders. Read the ladder once and the four options of this question fall into place on it — (b) is the bottom rung, (d) the second, (a) an employer-side statement of the same instrumental kind, and (c) the rung the question names.

Key facts

• The citizen concept regards the worker as a member of the industrial community, entitled to be consulted on the terms and conditions of his employment.
• The commodity concept, by contrast, treats labour as an article of trade priced by demand and supply; the machine concept treats it as a factor of production.
• Article 43A of the Constitution — ’Participation of workers in management of industries’ — was inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976.
• Article 43A directs the State to ’take steps, by suitable legislation or in any other way, to secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings, establishments or other organisations engaged in any industry’.
• Section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 provides for a Works Committee in an establishment employing one hundred or more workmen, with representatives of the employer and of the workmen.
• Section 5(1) of the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946 requires the Certifying Officer to send the draft standing orders to the workmen’s trade union, or to the workmen where there is none, and to invite objections within fifteen days.
• The Declaration of Philadelphia, adopted by the International Labour Conference in 1944, states that labour is not a commodity.
• Works committees, safety committees and canteen management committees are the standard illustrations of workers’ participation in management.

Common traps

• Choosing the option that sounds kindest rather than the one that states a right; the citizen concept is about standing, not about benevolence.
• Confusing the citizen concept with the paternalistic or goodwill concept, where the employer gives more than the contract requires but the worker holds no claim.
• Reading ’consulted’ as ’given a veto’. Consultation is a right to be heard on the terms of work; it is not co-determination, and the two sit on different rungs.
• Treating the commodity concept as merely old-fashioned rather than as a specific, testable proposition about demand and supply.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which concept of labour holds that the worker is an article of trade whose price is settled by the forces of demand and supply?

  • (a)Citizen concept
  • (b)Commodity concept
  • (c)Partnership concept
  • (d)Humanitarian concept

  Answer(b) Commodity concept

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under section 5(1) of the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, the workmen must submit their objections to the draft standing orders within

  • (a)seven days of receipt of the notice
  • (b)fifteen days of receipt of the notice
  • (c)thirty days of receipt of the notice
  • (d)sixty days of receipt of the notice

  Answer(b) fifteen days of receipt of the notice