Editorial

On Trial

Yet one more yearly ritual. Two-day general strike by workers across the country. Sponsors : Central Trade Unions affiliated to major mainstream parties. They do it every year before budget hopefully to influence the crisis managers. But budget makers seem to have already decided what to do taking suggestions and proposals from the corporate bigwigs. Central Trade Unions have very little role to play in formulating labour policies as they have literally capitulated to the corporate mentality. Labour, more precisely organised sector labour, has been under the sway of reactionary forces for long. Either Right Reaction or Left Reaction. But it is Reaction all the way.

The effectiveness of countrywide token bandh or work stoppage is so minimal that the government doesn’t take it seriously anymore. They just treat it as a minor irritation to be tackled by the authorities at the local level. They have so many legislative ways to destroy unions and thus collective bargaining as well while central trade unions do hardly represent the aspirations of the rank-and-file workers in battles for better living standards in a situation where decline in real wages is an irreversible phenomenon.

Industrialists and business people don't feel insecure at all despite sporadic withdrawal of labour and union militancy. They know the limit of union power. Union militancy cannot sustain itself in a vacuum. Not that workers don’t show their militancy here and there but they do it out of frustration as it happened in a maruti plant or in a tea garden of Assam in the recent past. But this type of militancy is suicidal. Nor does ‘occupy movement’ succeed in a country like India where de-unionisation is the basic trend, not unionisation. Long before the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement caught the imagination of millions across the globe, Kanoria Jute Workers showed the way. Again this militancy is sporadic, if not spontaneous, under independent initiatives and as a result workers soon find themselves in a situation of back to square one.

All Central Trade Unions are controlled by major political parties and yet workers, like any other segment of the society are viciously apolitical in their outlook. In truth they are insensitive to the happenings around their surroundings. Their limited political consciousness beings with vote and ends with vote. They are concerned about their narrow sectarian interests only. In other words they remain isolated from the majority of toilers, who toil in harsh conditions, having no power to challenge the anti-labour policies of the industry. And quite justifiably they are being viewed by the underclass as a privileged lot. Tragically enough the communist left like its non-communist counterpart, wants to keep the working community in that position because their sole purpose is to use them as vote bank. There are gross violations of human rights by the state and non-state actors as well throughout the country and yet organised sector workers don’t react. It’s simply unthinkable for organised sector workers, irrespective of their union affiliation, to speak out against custodial deaths, displacement of tribals, destruction of environment, gang rapes and all that. Hundreds of innocent people are languishing in jails for resisting corporate loot but workers are not concerned with it. Central Trade Unions they belong to never raise such issues in their ritualistic agitation and yet they think all will respond positively to their shut-down programme to pressurise the industry to have better living standards. Things may become easier for civil rights groups to fight for the release of political prisoners, detained unlawfully under false charges for years, if workers in major industries down their tools even for an hour. No that is not going to happen anytime soon. They are thoroughly apolitical and sectarian.

One major reason isolated industrial strikes fail and get crushed easily is worker’s alienation from broad masses of toilers. Bank and Insurance employees cannot expect solidarity support from contractual labourers, toiling day in and day out in sub-human conditions. Workers are so structured with their multi-layered sub-classes that they can hardly rise as a unified class against wage disparity, insecurity and social inequity. For the last few years no long-lasting industrial strike was reported from any part of the country. Mandays were lost mainly due to forced closures and lock-outs.

As unions are in most cases part of the management, they never urge workers to go on strike even if industrialists indulge in unfair labour practice. The system of union recognition has resulted in massive corruption while thwarting the growth of rebel initiatives. Right to work sounds hollow in an atmosphere where state intervention always goes against labour.

For one thing there won’t be any follow up action after the ‘‘successful’’ 2-day country-wide general strike or bandh on February 20-21. In other words Central Trade Unions will go in calculated hiberation, allowing the authorities to run their mills as they please, ignoring legally sanctioned rights of the workers. It’s an utopia to think workers in this part of the globe will ever rise above their sectarian interests and take positive stance towards broader mass movement. They are on trial and they will remain on trial unless they really pose themselves as vanguard. Barring a few select areas of industrial activity, workers are dying for a living. While Central Trade Unions vaguely agitate over anti-labour policies of the Centre, the increasing toll on public health exacted by work-related stresses in India is no laughing matter. Their agenda is silent about rising workload, which again stands in the way of creation of new jobs.          13-02-2013

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 32, February 17-23, 2013

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