Nirmal Kumar Betchoo
12 March 2008
Port Louis — The precarity of jobs in a globalised and liberalised world has become more than ever commonplace; the fact that hundreds of factory workers - as in the recent case of Manupan Ltd- can find themselves jobless overnight poses the question of finding ways to help redeploy workers who have sometimes spent a lifetime in a company.
Factory closures and cessation of businesses are commonly coined nowadays as current workplace issues. The recent closure of Manupan Ltd, a textile factory with long standing reputation in the Export Processing Zone, raises immediate concern from people involved within this unfortunate event. In the middle of some confusion between the receivership of the company and government's rescue intention, workers were the first to suffer from the direct consequences of the closure.
Employees are now redundant despite the fact that some of them might have worked since their late adolescence to maturity age. It is more like a human tragedy to witness every now and then, hundreds of workers who are suddenly laid off from their companies, which they otherwise considered as their second home.
The textile sector remains the most turbulent area of the industrial activity of the country since it evolves in a state of permanent flux and adjustment where shocks are usually difficult to contain.
Financial organisations may be in turbulent states during cessation of activities or a takeover bid but the very nature of white-collar jobs linked with the professional status of their employees, make them apt to be re-employed.
In the manufacturing sector, things look uncertain and dreary for many. Companies cannot anticipate their closure or sudden failure. Though some businesses are loss-making, they might reassure their employees that this is a temporary situation about to be remedied as soon as the economic situation improves. Meanwhile, the losses are so enormous that owners have no other choice than to bring them into receivership, prior to a takeover or imminent closure.
Government intervened several times to remedy the redundancy situation facing workers. In the past, a textile employment support team (TEST) was implemented to bring short-term relief to the redundant employees. This consisted of immediate financial support while waiting for the redundant employee to get a decent and stable job in the future. Further, job fairs were held in order to allow better-performing textile companies to propose a one-stop shop facility whereby the redundant workers could find possible outlets for redeployment.
"Though LITRA failed to maintain its worker company status as a result of adverse economic conditions and an absence of strategic leadership, the example of the worker company remains more than ever a possibility to re-examine."
- The worker company
Ideally, workers could have preferred to take responsibility of the business during the receivership term. On very rare occasions, one might have witnessed workers deciding to take ownership of their company.
The situation occurred in the eighties when a private company, Litronix, stopped its activities at a time when the economy was at peril. Employees, under a full socialist whim, decided to take the reigns of such a business and renamed it Linité Travayer. LITRA, as the new acronym, grew as an example of a company, which could stand up the fate of redundancy and work out a new work philosophy at that time.
The success of the company was immense and the example of the worker company to combat redundancy remained a classical example both to society and those concerned with human resource issues.
- The worker co-operative
Though LITRA failed to maintain its worker company status as a result of adverse economic conditions and an absence of strategic leadership, the example of the worker company remains more than ever a possibility to re-examine.
Workers are still agreeable to have a company run by themselves. Some trade unions admit that workers are already baked with their company culture and find it fair enough to manage business on their own. In this perspective, a worker cooperative would make sense.
The worker cooperative would comprise representatives of the workers' union within the company, team leaders and representatives of small interest groups within the organisation. This should definitely get the support from the government authorities to devise strategies for the company so that it could first get out of its troubled waters and make some initial recovery.
It is true that the success of the worker cooperative and company depends upon leadership and management strategies. Assuming that workers are not mature and competent enough to run the company, authorities within the industry could appoint managers who would temporarily assist such companies in difficulty while expecting them to be self-managed once the situation improves.
From this point of view, the worker cooperative would be an initial step to save jobs and get the company away from redundancy.
- Auxiliary organisation
Another option different from the worker co-operative could be converting the ailing company into an auxiliary company. In the textile sector, the existing company in difficulty already has the competences and know-how to manufacture quality products. Larger companies might decide to analyse the strengths of such organisations and convert them into their own subsidiaries.
The choice is evidently difficult to make since the closed company might be crumbling under heavy debts but also bear the burden of a large workforce, which the new company could not easily cater. Meanwhile, there are textile companies, which expect to double their production through expansion. Rather than investing in new plants under a backward integration strategy, these companies might have examined the possibility of developing some integration with the closed company while reorienting the redundant workforce to appropriate activities.
- The success of bus cooperatives
The redundancy situation suddenly brings the destiny of workers to a halt. After years of struggle within their organisation through long working hours and a much conditioned way of working, workers feel the void once they are made redundant.
Textile workers often compare themselves with those of the sugar sector who end up in a more fortunate way under the VRS scheme with some better relief like a piece of land and a lump sum. The situation in the textile sector is different since it operates within a confined environment where nothing can be distributed to the workers once work ceases in such companies.
However, developing a worker cooperative could help since workers already have the know-how and culture to get things done along with the courage to get away from adversity. The success of the private bus owners' cooperative proves its worth here. After more than a quarter of a century since the traditional bus companies have disappeared, the cooperative works fairly well and competitively enough to chase off redundancy and competition from the National Transport Corporation.
Definitely, the textile sector operates within a more precarious and uncertain environment along with a lack of protection from secured markets. Workers in the textile sector may not be easily employable since they are skills-specific people. In part, they could either end up working for the «haut de gamme» companies as a result of their experience. Otherwise, the worker co-operative stands as a last resort.
If workers could stand on their own and run their company, redundancy could be avoided along with the tragedies cropping up immediately. But, the spectre that the worker company may collapse raises some questions undoubtedly.
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