Occupational mobility and internal labour markets: Public sector workers' struggles in Bangalore (c. 1960-1980)

Abstract

Instead of seeking to conceptualize internal labour markets as either exclusively facilitating employers' drive for greater workplace efficiency or reinforcing the contractual rights of workers, it would be more productive to recast them as institutions inherently ambivalent in character, and hence equally capable of serving the interests of both sides. This also implies that formalized career structures are not always the unilateral creations of employers intent on forging a compliant and diligent workforce, as radical labour academics tend to suggest. The agentic role of workers and unions in fighting to establish a codified framework of employment rules needs to be recognized as well, given the effectiveness of such rules in protecting labour from the arbitrary exercise of managerial power. Procedures governing seniority entitlements and promotion opportunities can again both operate as a unifying and a divisive force. Underscoring anew their ambivalence, they have the potential as much to mobilize workers as to fracture them along generational, skill, and ascriptive lines. © 2008 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis.