REDUNDANCY

Dr. S. JAISHREE
Dr.C.S.RANGARAJAN

When the employers’ needs for employees to do work of a

particular kind have diminished or ceased, redundancy
occurs. The transition from sellers’ market into buyers’
market, inflation, recession and so on, severally or in
combination make increasing numbers of employers to go
out of business or cut down costs by making a part of their
labour force redundant in order to stay put in business.
Retrenchment, layoff, downsizing are terms which refer to
termination of employment of employees believed to be a
method devoid of madness to turn around a declining
organization. Resort to this method is seen as one, which
will help improve efficiency and effectiveness of personnel
and thus achieve performativity.

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Technical progress, which may be defined as ‘the
introduction of new or improved products or processes’ is
to be seen as an open sesame to sustained economic
growth. Technology is a double-edged weapon. Equally or
more than equally, the rate at which it creates jobs, it weeds
out existing jobs. Technology reduces a luxury into a
necessity and vice versa. When technology becomes
obsolete, modernization becomes a luxury on account of
the product life cycle, affecting the organization, the skills
of the personnel and also the industrial relations. The
solvency of the organization is likely to become suspect
with dwindling market share. Enforced obsolescence of
skills reduces the alternative for employment outside. The
‘zeigarnick effect’, which surfaces due to ‘deskilling’or
‘trained incapacity’ cannot be overlooked. The organization
is left with no alternative other than to do away with the
surplus labour. Though the principle of ‘last come, first to
go’ must be employed to meet the legal requirements,
organizations devise ingenious methods such as ‘golden-
hand shake’ ‘voluntary retirement’ and so on to bid adieu

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to those seen as surplus labour. The overall impact of
technology upon the social structure, as Robert Merton
holds, becomes nobody’s business through default.
The moot point for consideration is whether it is
technology, or any other factor besides technology, which
contributes to the reduction in the number of men at work?
To what extent outputs from environmental sub-systems
flow back into the industrial relations system and thus have
predictive ability over issues relating to surplus labour?
What methods the industry has devised to ease out the
surplus without tears? On procedural and substantive issues
whether the one devised by the industry to siphon off the
excess is more favorable to the employees than the one
under the relevant legal provisions, if at all there is one?
How to relieve the increasing pressure on society to find
ways and means of rehabilitation of the redundant
employees? These are, inter alias the questions, which need
an answer through investigative research. What indicators
could be thought of to estimate the existence of surplus
labour? Precisely, it is the question of identification of

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indicators of surplus labour that would pose problems.
While secondary data might help to overcome such a
problem, what data from primary source need to be
generated? Even assuming but not conceding that industrial
establishments toying with the idea of effecting man-power
reduction are receptive to investigative research being
carried out in their establishment, to what extent primary
data could be taken as reliable without adequate support
from secondary sources?
A study on redundancy may appear to be redundant. But it
is desirable at the present juncture in view of the fact that
the freedom to hire and fire has not only become current
coin which goes unnoticed, but has the indirect blessings of
the power that be. It is therefore seen at the top of the
national agenda. But such a study can make headway only
when these cobwebs are removed.
(Incomplete)