New Delhi, 2 September 2015: In record numbers workers across the country struck work today. Through the length and breadth of the country, workers from all sectors in tens of millions stood in solidarity with one and another to tell the BJP government that its writ will not run and that they will not accept the attack on wages and trade union rights.
The New Trade Union Initiative salutes its members and the entire working class who stood up courageously today against the onslaught of government and employers, the attack from political parties and their goons, and the opposition from trade unions of parties of government in power, in numbers that marks a turning point for progressive trade unions and the militant working class. Today’s strike was different in that it was not restricted to enclaves of trade union strength but brought forth the political power of the working class to enforce its strike in so many towns and cities across the country.
The NTUI in particular celebrates workers in irregular, contract, ‘honorary’, daily wage work mostly in unsafe and insecure jobs – many of whom face the possibility of losing their jobs when engaging in industrial action. The NTUI also celebrates the strike action in the private sector especially in the National Capital Region, where repression for standing up for trade union rights is perhaps at its highest, as also its members across the private sector including in global firms: in Alstom, Ashok Leyland, Bajaj Auto, Blue Star, DHL, Holcim, Hyundai Earth Movers, Knorr Bremse, Novartis, Sanofi, Siemens, Tenneco, Thermax, Valeo and so many more. Our members were also able to bring in coordination with other progressive trade unions a near complete shutdown in the Bhilai and Adityapur (Jamshedpur) industrial areas. In Jamshedpur and elsewhere in Jharkhand and in the tea plantations of West Bengal, our activists were arrested.
Of course the strike was not entirely uniform at all locations. In some of public sector mines, electricity generations and steel plants where our affiliates unionise contract workers the permanent workers did not join the strike action. Persistent divisions such as these remain challenges to be addressed. And yet we, like other unions, also broke new ground. In several districts in northern Karnataka, members of our agricultural workers’ affiliate joined the strike in the thousands. In many district towns of Assam daily wage workers joined a general strike for the first time.
Today’s strike was critical signal to government that the working class has a capacity to resist when democratic rights of workers are attacked. It became all the more important as this was a call by the 13 recognised trade unions of which the trade union affiliated to the parties of government broke ranks and opposed it last week as the government threw sops at the trade unions. The government last week proposed a revision of the minimum wage and annual bonus in a failed meeting with the trade unions. What today’s strike unambiguously signals is that progressive trade unions and our members are not willing to negotiate our demands in a piecemeal manner. The working class will not be bought over by a virtual tweaking of the minimum wage and the annual bonus but it will stand up for comprehensive wage rights including social security and social protection and for trade union rights. We know that nothing can be defended or won without the right to collective bargaining and the right to freedom of association.
N. Vasudevan
Gautam Mody
The New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI)