Vol. 4, Issue 10, Part C (2018)

Abstract
A popular assumption about the benefits of globalization is that growth and its assumed redistribution helps the masses crawl out of poverty. With an intent to test this, a field survey of workers engaged in the manufacture of ready-made garments in Bangalore, a major centre for international and national manufacturing supply chains, and employing 0.75 million workers, was undertaken. Its purpose was to evaluate the nature of job tenures, working conditions, employee benefits, family income and expenditure on non-food essentials like transportation, health, education, etc. Even though the family sizes appear to be reasonably small, the overall income and expenditure balance is very precarious. Some of the noticeable facts are that the workforce is predominantly female (75 per cent) and that the working hours are long, on an average being nine hours/day. Most of the weekly holidays are observed but without any pay. The turnover of workers is also very high. Indian Society thrives on contradictions. The field of labor is a bundle of contradictions. Even since Mark Holmstrom, an Australian Sociologist of labor introduced a dichotomy between organized labor and unorganized labor it has become a persistence source of great deal of discussion, debate and discourse among Sociologists, labor economists, social anthropologists and labor activists. The former has been dubbed as "labor aristocracy" who has used labor unions to gain wide range of benefits and privileges even at the cost of their less fortunate counterpart the unorganized labor.