White-Collar and Managerial Trade Unions

There was a time when unions and strikes were known only to Blue-collar workers in factories, mines, railways docks, etc.

White-collar employees and professional people like doctors, engineers, lawyers, professors and senior executives and managerial staff thought it below their dignity to band themselves in unions, march the high streets, and yell slogans.

Today it is different. Trade unions exist among most professionals, white-collar employees, officers, senior executives, and managers, and so do strikes and gheraos. Highly paid employees in banks, in the Life Insurance Corporation and in many other establishments are organised, and so the Central Government and semi-government employees. They take recourse to strikes, mass casual leaves, work to rule, dharnas, and gheraos for securing their demand and thus creating some embarrassing problems for their employers/managements requiring serious consideration.

Both blue and white-collar workers are employees, but are of different status, and holding different positions at different levels. The differences between these two categories of unions are as summarised in the Table below.