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Informal Wage Labour and Capital-Labour Struggles in Karnataka’s Automotive Sector


This article examines the critical role of informal wage labour and capital labour struggles in India’s automotive and auto components sector in the post reform period. This is viewed through the analytical lens of the labour process and draws on fieldwork conducted in Karnataka in 2014. The labour process emphasises conflict between capital and labour as critical to understanding differentiation of the workforce. This contrasts with mainstream theories of labour flexibility which are narrowly based on efficiency motives of the firm. Taking a labour process perspective requires analysis at different levels of the economy, linking the firm level with the broader socio-economic forces at play. This demonstrates how differentiation of the workforce emerges from the way in which capital accumulation proceeds. At the firm level, the division of labour is augmented through the adoption of technology, organisation of production, disciplining workers, and on-going capital-labour struggles. Firms actively reshape the composition of the workforce to restrict the bargaining power of labour and reduce the value of labour power. This includes a growing preference for non-unionised rural and semi-rural workers and female workers, a dynamic observed throughout the automotive supply chain. The asymmetric balance of power between capital and labour and the state’s role in institutionalising a flexible labour regime are critical forces shaping capital accumulation, with implications for the structure of the workforce. Finally, the article outlines a new location of labour discontent in Karnataka’s automotive sector. This reveals that workers’ struggles against capital are shifting to include the issue of informal wage labour in the organised sector.