And the people...

Most of the members look up to the field staff for solving their problems. The field staff work in the districts and the estates and travel to different places in the field area. They don't have good and comfortable means of transport. It is important to have your own means of transport, so that you not only cover the field areas but also return in good time to your family station. The disparity in living conditions is considerable across the metro, the district towns, the area towns and the field places including estates. Hence it is the field staff's major concern to be staying at a place of reasonable comforts. They are employees of the organisation. But there is no employer-employee contractual relationship. It is more of a community-based organisation. So the staff are full-time activists and workers who are committed to the cause for which the organisation stands.

It is not in the field staff's powers to redress major grievances. They have to escalate such matters to the district level leadership. They become the conduit through which the member's views and woes are transmitted to the upper echelons. The leader by rule is handling several matters broadly categorised into industrial relations and development.

If the leader holds a public office such as an MLA, he tends to give more weightage to the redressal of general developmental issues and relegates the industrial relations matters. He has to also find time to meet the delegations of members, hear them out, understand and deliberate on the thorny matters. At times he has to seek intervention of the national leaders. Apart from communication, personal equations, trust and rapport play a very crucial role in the interactions of the staff with their leadership.

Over decades, the staff had experienced powerlessness on account of the peculiar situation of most of the labour who had been denied for a long time basic citizenship rights. The staff in such cases reported matters to the national leadership which alone was capable of moving matters through political negotiations at the highest levels.

In turn,the staff carried out the directives of the national leadership for launching agitational programmes in the field. Hence the legacy of the past lies in the expectation of the staff to have a direct link with the national leadership.

In most cases, the staff are simple, sincere and committed people working on low salaries, transferable on the basis of personal equations with the leaders and not possessing own means of transport. Their commitment to the organisation is rock solid.