FEBRUARY 24 COUNTRYWIDE GENERAL STRIKE

 To Defend The Right To Strike! To Expose The Lie Campaign

Tapan Sen

ON February 24, 2004, the country is going to witness the 9th all India general strike since the onset of the disastrous liberalised economic policy regime. The date of the general strike was finalised in the joint meeting of all major central trade unions in the country held at the INTUC headquarters at New Delhi on January 5.

This general strike is not to press any economic demands of the workers. The strike is essentially for defending the right to strike in the face of prohibitive order of the Supreme Court in that regard. The strike is also directed against the disastrous economic policy regime of the NDA government resulting in deepening poverty, growing unemployment, reckless privatisation and closures – all bringing about a severe distortion in the economy as a whole, much to the detriment of the national interest.

CONCERTED ATTACKS

Both the issues taken up for the forthcoming general strike are closely interrelated. The ongoing attacks on labour rights are a direct outcome of the vigorous implementation of the Fund-Bank dictated policies of liberalisation by the NDA regime. The working class movement has been consistently striving to build a countrywide resistance against such policies from the day they were implemented. This resistance has now started drawing support from the mass of the populace beyond the boundaries of the trade union movement. To meet this resistance the so called labour market reform has now become the main agenda of second generation reforms which aims at imposing the conditions of slavery on the working people and strip them off all their rights to collectively express and protest. As part of this effort the bills to amend the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Labour (Regulations and Abolition) Act have already been finalised and cleared by the NDA government. They are designed to vest unfettered power with the employers to hire and fire at will and deploy workers on contract in every sector on the one hand and to impose insurmountable embargo before the unions to organise, collectively represent and strike on the other. Those bills could not be brought before the 13th Lok Sabha by the NDA government, may be because of its immediate political constraints in view of advancing of the general election.

But along with this legislative initiative to enslave and casualise the entire working class, the administrative exercise by the State machinery to totally clip the rights of organised working class movement has come out with all force. Even the judicial wing has come forward to supplement, as well as legitimise, the proactive and mostly unlawful actions by the State to curb the trade union activities in active collusion with the employers. This is manifested in the consistent rise in the employers’ militancy during the entire post-liberalisation period. They are randomly resorting to lockouts and closures even in the face of a decline in the incidence of strikes. In fact, during 1991-2000, lockouts accounted for 60 per cent of the total mandays lost. In 1999 alone, mandays lost owing to lockouts were eight times more than those lost due to strikes. In 2001 it was three times more while in 2002 it was four times more. If mandays lost due to closures and undeclared shutdowns are also taken into account, more than 90 per cent mandays lost during the entire post liberalisation period can be attributed to the employers’ class alone. Yet the apex court in its judgment delivered on August 6, 2003 did not hesitate to describe ‘strike’ as a weapon ‘mostly abused by the workers’.  

Besides lockouts and closures, flagrant violations of labour laws, particularly pertaining to statutory minimum wages, are so common that the workers got tired of even filing complaints regarding the same since the enforcement machinery has been made totally ineffective by the government in the name of becoming “investment friendly”. As for example, of the total complaints lodged regarding violation of Minimum Wages Act during 2002-03, hardly one third have been attended to and disposed of according to the latest Annual Report of the Union Labour Ministry (2002-03). In reality, violation of existing labour laws on workers’ rights-related matters is being indulged and promoted by the government machinery as a part of their policy of so called “investment-friendliness”.

RECENT BACKGROUND

The toiling people of the country, who create wealth for the nation, are being attacked with a vengeance by the employer-class. They are losing jobs in several thousands owing to closures, lockouts, and more so, due to unlawful shutdowns. And they remain deprived of even the minimum statutory compensations in most of the cases. Any form of organised protest against unlawful shutdowns and lockouts have been tackled with brutality by the local police and administration that are always ready at the beck and call of the employers. Such is the experience in almost every case of lockouts and closures in the industrial centres of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, UP and many other states of the country. The happenings with the striking employees of Tamil Nadu betrayed perverse vindictiveness on the part of the state administration, unheard of in the entire history of labour movement. Such perversion has become the norm under the new policy regime where the ruling polity and the employer class are conniving in their effort to eliminate the possibility of any organised and collective expression of dissent by the working class. It is not without any reason that the highest court in the country justified all vindictive actions of the Jayalalitha government against the striking employees, while pronouncing a decisive ban on the right to strike of all employees in general. At the same time it did not even bother to look into the issues arising out of unilateral actions of the state government, which led to the strike in the first place. And most interestingly, while the ban has been pronounced by the apex court on the workers right to strike, in another judgment passed in December 2003, the employers have been virtually conferred the “right to kill”. In the said judgment, an owner of a Kerala based factory who shot dead two striking workers, squatting at the factory gate on the day of a general strike on March 15, 1998, was acquitted on ground of self defence although he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the lower court after detailed hearing of the case. It is also noteworthy that while responding to the complaint lodged by the CITU and Public Services International with the ILO on the repression on the Tamil Nadu state govt employees, the Vajpayee govt. fully endorsed all the atrocities committed by the Jayalalitha regime. The perverse bias of the entire state machinery against the working class thus stands thoroughly exposed.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRIKE

In this background, the working people throughout the country are going in for countrywide general strike on February 24 to assert their right to strike and reiterate their firm resolve to fight back the anti-people and anti-national policies. The attack on the labour rights is a prelude to the attacks on the entire democratic set up and institutions of the nation as the imperialist globalisation cannot remain comfortable with the democratic and collective assertions of the people.

The strike preparations began through out the nation immediately after the announcement of the date of general strike on January 5. Unfortunately, in the aftermath, the national leadership of INTUC backed out on its commitment in favour of the strike decision, but that made little difference to the situation. The joint state-level conventions, already held in most of the states in the country in support of the call for the general strike, have witnessed the participation of the INTUC and also some BMS-affiliated unions in many places. In the Andamans, the INTUC state leadership joined other trade union centers in issuing a joint statement supporting the strike action. In banking sector the United Forum of Bank Unions, consisting of all the unions of employees and officers of all shades in that sector, has decided to join the general strike and it is going to be a total strike in the banking sector. Similar will be the situation in the other part of the financial sector, i.e., insurance sector.

In the Bharat Electronics Ltd, Ghaziabad, all the unions affiliated to INTUC, AITUC, CITU and HMS have served the strike notice. In the public sector units all over the country, various independent unions have also come forward to join the strike. In Maharashtra, the Kamgarh Aghadi of Dada Samant has also joined the strike campaign.  Even in the state of Gujarat, where the trade union movement is weak otherwise, massive response to the strike has been witnessed during the preparations. Unions of various affiliations, including those not covered by the trade union centers that first sponsored the strike action, also joined in a big way and massive mobilisations are being organised in all major centers of the state. The All India Defence Employees Federation, representing overwhelming majority of employees engaged in defence production and ordnance depots spread all over the country, has also decided to join the strike. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK-led Labour Progressive Federation has come forward to join the general strike in the state, which will strengthen the strike action.

At the present stage, district level joint conventions are being organised throughout the country as part of strike preparations. Reports of district level conventions have already started pouring in from Andhra Pradesh, Assam and few other states. Reports are being received of enthusiastic response from many centers. Massive response is reported in the preparatory rallies held in the collieries throughout the country and also from the non-coal mining belts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. Total strike will be witnessed in all the hydel projects under construction in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Uttaranchal.  Good response is also reported from the unorganised sector workers in construction, beedi, loading-unloading, brick-kilns, and other occupations. They are taking active initiative in the strike campaign at various places of the country. Anganwadi workers throughout the country are also joining the strike action in a big way.

The government employees all over the country are most directly affected by the Supreme Court judgment and this time the government employees in all the states and at the centre are determined to give a fitting reply to the onslaught on their basic rights. The federations of the government employees took the pioneering initiative, along with others, which ultimately materialised in the programme of countrywide general strike on February 24 involving most of the central trade union organisations. The activities of the All India State Govt Employees Federation and the Confederation of Central Govt Employees and Workers in preparation to the strike are receiving massive response throughout the country. It is not without reason that the Jayalalitha government had to finally take back all the dismissed employees in service, albeit with cumulative cuts in increments. The atmosphere created by the intense campaign for the strike and the forthcoming elections have created a situation of compulsion for the Jayalalitha regime to retrace its earlier actions, at least partially. This has created a further impetus for the strike on February 24, which will go down as the biggest ever strike action all over the country, braving a more challenging situation.

Confusion is sought to be created by the government and the anti-strike lobby about the justification of the strike, in a situation where there is only a caretaker government in office and the country is heading for general election. The matter is crystal clear. The major issue before the strike is the issue of basic democratic rights of the workers to strike and organise, which is sought to be curbed by the Supreme Court. The general strike of February 24 will voice the condemnation and exposure of the anti-worker NDA rule. At the same time, it would also send a message to those others vying for power in the coming general election as to what would be the position of the working class on the issue of economic policies and democratic rights of the people. In fact, the forthcoming general election has made the general strike much more relevant for the working class and democratic people to voice their clear-cut opposition to the anti-people neo-liberal globalisation and the nasty move to curb the rights of the toiling people. The strike will be the working people’s befitting reply to the hundreds of crores of rupees lie campaign by the NDA bandwagon on this so called “feel good situation” with a view to cheating the people. 

Active participation by the unorganised sector workers in the February 24 strike will explode the utter falsehood being propagated in the electronic media with the larger than life size portrayal of Vajpayee on the so called “social safety net” for “37 crore workers of the unorganised sector”. The said scheme is just an unalloyed falsehood being used as an election gimmick, that too with public money. The recent interim budget did not sanction even a pie for the said scheme. It is abundantly clear the scheme, if at all takes off, will not cover even a fraction of one per cent of the magic figure of 37 crore in the next five year period. This is what is actually written in the scheme paper supplied by Labour Minister’s office itself on the day of launching. The February 24 strike will lay bare the naked lies of the opportunist NDA bandwagon, while the working class will be asserting their inalienable right to strike and all forms of collective actions.   

If the tempo of strike campaign throughout the country is any indication, the country is going to witness bandh like situation in at least six or seven states, including West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, besides rallying the mass of the working class across the sectors and occupations in the strike action in other parts of the country. The rural workers and the peasantry along with other sections of people are going to stage militant demonstrations at various centres throughout the country on that day.