Workplace Relations in Colonial Bengal

Anna Sailer is Lecturer at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany.

This book reminds us that we must know what happens on the shop-floor to understand the factory. In South Asian labour historiography, we have theorized capitalist strategy without paying sufficient attention to the actual work process. It is also blindingly obvious, as the author of this book points out, that workers’ everyday experience of work is critical to their politics.

• Introduction 1. Sets, Squads, and Shifts: The Emergence and Development of the 'Multiple Shift' System 2. Uninterrupted hours of work and frequent breaks: The modalities of shared work and excess employment at the shopfloor3. Defending the spaces and rhythms of the workplace: Labour conflicts over the change in shift systems4. ‘Various Paths Are Today Opened’: Working class politics and the General strike of 1929 5. 'Fight to finish': Labour Conflicts in the Bengal Jute Belt in the 1930s