Shyamal Majumdar: The sea change in the news rooms

THE HUMAN FACTOR

If October 3 was an important date in the history of the Indian media houses, it's not only because the K K Birla-promoted Hindustan Times took the unusual step of giving marching orders to 362 printing press workers on that day.

What was more striking was the muted reactions to the move. Except for the odd dharna by the employees' union outside the imposing HT office in the Capital, and the workers moving the High Court, no other dissenting voice was heard.

Not a single politician grabbed this "opportunity" to come to the defence of the press workers. More than a fortnight after the event, it is business as usual in one of India's largest media empires.

In many ways, this marks a sea change in the industrial relations scenario in India's media industry. A former senior editor says the move was "unthinkable" even a few years ago when the unions routinely "refused permission" to shift reporters from the business bureau to the general news bureau in the same location.

"The union was the real boss. Forget termination or even transfers. Editors had to operate within the space provided by the union," he says.

HT was not alone. In 1997, The Indian Express management brought out a truncated Budget day edition of The Financial Express in Delhi on the sly.

Just two journalists sneaked into the office late at night and the paper was printed at a faraway location. Reason: the union had called a flash strike on a day when it hurts a financial newspaper the most "" both in terms of prestige as well as revenue.

The same Express management later had the courage to suspend both the president and the vice president of the union on disciplinary reasons. A former senior executive of the Express Group believes that the major change in the industrial relations scenario in the media industry happened between 1995-96 and 2000. This was the period when the unions' power reduced considerably.

The reason was quite simple: faced with a tremendous pressure on its bottomline due to soaring newsprint costs and guaranteed wages even for surplus staff, the newspaper industry had to prune its costs. The Express Group, for example, split the group's offices in Delhi "" and, therefore, the union "" to different locations.

Jansatta was moved to Noida. The Indian Express staff was moved to Qutub Institutional area from its Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg office. Briefly, even The Financial Express was moved to East of Kailash. "This was a deliberate strategy. The union weakened considerably due to the physical distance between the different offices," the former executive says.

A limited VRS scheme and some strategic transfers also did the trick. Today, for instance, it would be hard to believe that Express had 70 to 80 people in Delhi whose only job was to pack the newspaper and load it on the trucks.

Express obviously learnt the ropes after a hard struggle. In the early 1990s, it created another union affiliated to the ABVP. This was basically a union that kept the original union's activities in check.

A few years earlier, another significant change happened in the industry "" this time driven by the Bennett, Coleman Group, publisher of The Times of India. Under the stewardship of Samir Jain, the group introduced the contract system, which essentially meant journalists were appointed on a fixed-term contract, which was renewable every two to three years.

To win support for what was then a unique system in the media industry, Jain sweetened it by offering a salary that was higher than what the wage board for journalists had mandated.

The newspaper industry was up in arms against the move, which was interpreted as nothing but a direct violation of the freedom of the press. The Jains, however, had the last laugh when the same newspaper managements, which had earlier laughed at them for trying to implement an unworkable system, later pursued contractual employment with great vigour.

The contract system, which is now estimated to cover over 65 per cent of journalists, ensured that newspaper unions could never have the same clout once again. The Times Union office bearers admit the erosion of their power base. "Automation and contract system have broken our back," says one of them. As an afterthought, he adds: "Our struggle will continue nevertheless."

One sure sign of the changing times is that politicians are missing from the HT dispute, which essentially revolved around the workers' resistance to their transfer from Hindustan Times Ltd to Hindustan Times Media Ltd (HTML), the new joint venture company floated with Henderson of Australia, since February this year.

HT Employees Union General Secretary S N Sinha, however, says the union had approached the Delhi High Court two years ago when the management first decided to shift its printing activities to Noida and Gurgaon. "At that point, we had given in writing to the management and the court that we were willing to work from the new premises. We, however, wanted a composite agreement with the management on the terms and conditions of service, which the management was not interested in," he says.

Whatever be the truth, the winds of change in the media industry are clear. Labour lawyer Nachiket Joshi feels the change was inevitable for two reasons. One, in an effort to sniff out trade unions, most media managements started paying much above the wage board prescribed for working journalists.

"Usually, the management-labour confrontation happens on emoluments. So the managements took the reasons for the strife away. Two, many more vistas in terms of job opportunities opened up for journalists. Alternative employment became easier to find. So no one particularly bothered about the unions," he says.