It started with a small provocation and snowballed into a war- like a bar-room brawl setting off a gang warfare. On February 27, a manager at Hindustan Lever Limited's Garden Reach factory on the outskirts of Kolkata, asked a contractor engaged in unloading chemicals to reduce the size of his "gang" of workmen from 13 to eight. He felt the workload had reduced due to increased competition and outsourcing. The factory is distressingly over-manned: 1,153 regular employees make volumes that HLL's other units do with 300 people or less. It also has contractors deploying 230 workers who are given non-core jobs like loading and unloading but are paid salaries at a par with regular workers and, like them, enjoy job security. The more important tie that binds them is the leadership of Kamal Tiwari, the 44-year-old trade unionist. Dreaded by industrialists of the area as "Bengal's Datta Samant", Tiwari's word is law in this once bustling industrial centre along the Hooghly's bank. It now wears a sepulchral look, barring a few units that are battling on, like HLL's.

HANDS OFF: Workers led by Tiwari (bearded) protest at HLL's Garden Reach factory

That February day, Tiwari's command came in short and sharp: do not lift the chemicals if all the 13 men in the unit are not recorded present and paid for the shift, work or no work. The managers then turned to the next contractor. His reply was the same. When the management approached the regular workers, unionised under Tiwari's Hindustan Lever Shramik Karamchari Congress, to do the unloading, their refusal was a foregone conclusion. In the following days, the ritual of slogans and clenched fists spread to all departments of the unit. On March 10, the permanent workmen at the warehouse engaged in stacking operations were asked to report to the toilet soap management instead of the commercial department, their earlier reporting authority. They refused and instead stopped work for a week, followed by a 72-hour strike.

The harried management declared a lockout. The lockout notice issued by the company lists 40 instances of disruption of work by the unions under Tiwari in the three years prior to the lockout, the first in the unit's 70 years. There were instances of work stoppage due to refusal to take an inter-departmental transfer and even to punch the time card. And all this despite the average wage at the factory being Rs 9,500 per month, which, according to the HLL management, is the highest in all the factories of the company in the eastern region.

In a state that earned nationwide notoriety in the 1970s for its disruptive work culture-it contributed the word "gherao" to the Oxford English Dictionary-the spectre of labour militancy is showing up again after a brief lull in the '90s. While 6.49 million mandays were lost due to strikes and lockouts in 1995, State Labour Commissioner Raj Pal Singh Kahlon puts the corresponding figure for 2002 at 19.97 million. And, from age-old smokestacks like the jute and engineering industries, once the nursery of arm-twisting unionism, militancy is now spreading to such greenfields as hotels, restaurants, hospitals and educational institutions. While central trade unions like CITU, INTUC, HMS or BMS have marginal penetration in units that employ less than a thousand workers, the rising stars are the unit-level unionists like Tiwari who are not attached to political parties and are a law unto themselves.

UNION SATRAP: Pandey has put paid to the privatisation plan of the Great Eastern Hotel

Even if they are attached to a central body, they function independently. Like Ramen Pandey, who is INTUC's state secretary but is considered the self-supporting czar of hotel and restaurant unions. In the late '90s, when the Left Front government announced its plan to sell off Great Eastern Hotel, the first large hotel of the British Empire which is now a loss-ridden state public sector unit, Pandey swiftly captured its union from CITU and got the privatisation plan scuttled. Though its worker strength has now come down to 520 from 1,200 in 1996, and sealed bids have been invited for its sale, Pandey has made sure that the bidding conditions have a clause that no worker will be terminated. No wonder then that potential bidders are only bidding adieu, the latest being Bharat Hotels of Lalit Suri.

The effects of Pandey's zeal are on display on Park Street, Kolkata's lone entertainment district. Labour strife has ruined the economies of a number of bars and restaurants that won't survive without employing casual labour at a lower cost. But the unions force the management to regularise each of the surly and tips-happy hired waiters. A Park Street restaurateur says on condition of anonymity that he is a helpless victim of the "waiter raj" in his establishment. That's why the Skyroom, a restaurant reputed for its continental fare, closed down a few years ago (its union, however, was led by a CITU offshoot and not Pandey). But Pandey has now got Blue Fox, a swinging place till the early '90s, closed down. "I want workers to run the restaurant," he says.

RISING MILITANCY...

After a brief lull in the 1990s, the spectre of labour militancy is showing up once again.

From jute and engineering industries, arm-twisting unionism is now spreading to hotels, hospitals and educational institutions.

The rising stars of labour unions are not attached to political parties and are a law unto themselves.

... AND THE HAVOC IT PLAYS

Scuttled plans for privatisation of the Great Eastern Hotel, now a loss-ridden public sector unit.

Labour strife has ruined the economies of hotels and restaurants that usually employed casual labour.

In hospitals, workers demand a share of the 10 per cent service charge.

At Garden Reach, several units have run aground due to labour strife.

The tendency of labour to continually up the ante is now spreading to private hospitals, where workers are even demanding a share of the 10 per cent "service charge" in lieu of refraining from taking tips from patients. They also want free treatment in the hospital for casual employees. Union pressure has made it impossible for pharma and consumer goods companies to sack their sales representatives. To bypass the unions, bigger FMCG firms are now getting their distributors to appoint salesmen.

Bengal's new labour leaders are obviously impervious to the demands of the changing business and economic climate. Tiwari's terse reaction to the HLL lockout is, "If the strength of the loading team has to reduce from 13 to eight, tell us first about the fate of the remaining five." But the fate is writ large in his other romping grounds at Garden Reach-an air-conditioner manufacturing plant locked out for six years, an industrial tower unit lumbering out of a seven-month-long strike, a public-sector shipbuilding unit nearly run aground due to labour problem. The irony is this brand of unionism will sound the death knell for a state that is desperate to live down its past anti-capital image when knocking at every door for private investment.