People's Democracy

  Forward To All India General Strike, May 21!

_W R Varada Rajan

  THE date has been decided. The Indian working class will take its fight against the powers that be once again to the streets, by staging a glorious countrywide general strike on May 21, against the anti-people, anti-national and anti-labour policies of the government of India.

  The NDA government, which doled out innumerable promises to the people, has reneged on every one of them. It has derailed the entire economy. The growth rate has come down. Agriculture, industry, trade – all are in a deep crisis. The rural poor are reeling under the impact of drought, famine and penury. The government’s record on the employment front is one of dismal failure. In utter desperation, the Vajpayee regime has mounted an all-out attack on the democratic rights of the people. It has specifically targeted the working people of the country for its onslaughts, for it is they who have been in the forefront of the struggle against the bankrupt policies of the NDA government.

RALLY ALL WORKERS!

The Workers’ March to Parliament on February 26 sent out a serious warning to the Vajpayee government – totally reverse your disastrous policies or else face the indignant wrath of the whole people!

  The first half of the budget session of parliament has recently concluded. There is as yet no sign of the government rethinking any of its policies. Rather, the NDA regime is seeking to divert the people’s attention away from its failures on all fronts, to non-issues, creating a deadly divide within the society.

  The national consultative meeting of trade unions, held on March 12, has responded to the task mandated to it in the declaration adopted by lakhs of workers on February 26. It has fixed May 21 as the date for all-India general strike. It has once again endorsed the eight point demands charter, all related to the basic policy issues that are relevant for all sections of our society.

It is unfortunate that the leadership of two of the central trade unions, viz the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) and Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), has chosen not to be part of the present call for strike. But it needs to be remembered that the strike is to take place on the very same demands which they too have been putting forth along with other central trade unions for over two years now. They were also parties to the decision to call for a countrywide strike in pursuance of these demands, the date of which was agreed to be announced during the joint demonstrations staged on July 24, 2001. While the BMS pulled out on the eve of the National Assembly of Workers held in Delhi on July 15, 2002, the INTUC chose to abstain from the national consultative meeting on March 12, 2003. They may put out their own explanations. But the fact remains that this call for a strike on May 21 is just a carry forward of the relentless campaign on the agreed demands of the entire spectrum of trade union movement in the country.

INTENSIVE CAMPAIGN IS ON

The trade unions are confident that the workers of this country will respond to their call for action and contribute to making the May 21 strike a magnificent success. To ensure that, all of us must carry on a sustained campaign on these demands and reach out to every worker, cutting across affiliations, in order to reach them the message of united action.

  1.  One of the main demands of the proposed united action is: Halt to privatisation of profit making and potentially viable public sector undertakings.

  Privatisation has become a mania with those in the governance of the country. The NDA government is in an unseemly haste to privatise the profit making and potentially viable central public sector undertakings, handing them over to pre-determined ‘buyers’ just for a song. India has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world to have a separate ministry for disinvestments, and the present incumbent in office has authored a manual as well on how to privatise our valuable assets. For every successive financial year, budgetary targets are fixed for realisation of proceeds through disinvestment. Every one of the deals, worked out for offering valuable national assets to the most favoured corporate lobbies on a platter, has turned out to be a scam, earning strictures even from the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG).

  The present government has scant regard even for the security of the country, as was revealed by its moves to resort to disinvest even in strategic sectors like oil, defence, airports and sea ports etc. Taking the BJP’s victory in Gujarat as a fresh affirmation of his policies, the prime minister is giving a go-ahead to a series of privatisation deals, brushing aside muted protests even from its allies in the ruling coalition.

  What is going on in the name of privatisation or disinvestment is sheer loot of national wealth. The trade union movement has to mobilise all sections of the patriotic people of this country to stop the present government in its tracks and uphold our sovereignty and self-reliance.

  The governments at the centre and in several states are also resorting to corporatising several departments, as a first step towards privatisation. Outsourcing the functions of government departments is also being resorted to in a big way, coupled with the moves towards downsizing the workforce. The government is also resorting to fast-track privatisation of the insurance and banking sectors. The employees of the central and state governments, and of the financial sector, have also launched struggles to resist these policies. The general trade union movement too has to come forward to extend solidarity to these sections of employees.

 OPPOSE RETROGRADE LABOUR LEGISLATIONS

  2.  Another major demand the action will press is: No change in the labour laws in favour of the employers and against the interest of the workers.

  Armed with the retrograde recommendations made by the report of the Second National Commission on Labour, the government is moving ahead to legislate changes that will adversely affect the interests of the mass of workers. In the face of united opposition voiced at the meeting of the Indian labour conference held in September 2002, the labour minister is reneging on his commitment to have an in-depth discussion on the report in the tripartite forum. The recommendations of the Labour Commission, if allowed to be implemented, will put the trade union movement in a straitjacket. Onerous working and living conditions will be imposed on the working class. Social security benefits of the workers would be drastically curtailed and employees will be given an unrestrained right of hire and fire, on a platter.

  The group of ministers, which deliberated the issue, has chalked out plans to introduce amendment bills to the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Act, giving a free hand to employers for retrenching their workers and closing their establishments. The attempt is to take away the hard-won trade union and democratic rights of the workers and place them at the mercy of  employers.

  The trade union movement will have to wage a determined struggle to defeat this offensive of the government, which is in league with the employers, to impose the conditions of slavery on the working people. They have to defend their hard-earned rights to organise, bargain and strike through bitter struggle.

  3.  Through their united action, the workers will also press for immediate enactment of a comprehensive legislation for agricultural workers.

  Out of the total workforce in the country, almost 60 per cent are agricultural workers. This huge workforce has, however, no legal protection whatsoever. They are denied even the minimum wage fixed by the government. They are also grossly underemployed due to the seasonal nature of agricultural operations. The policy of liberalisation has led to a negative growth rate in agriculture. Even the talk of land reform is now being given a go-by. Corporate farming is being promoted. The small, marginal and middle peasants who are evicted from their lands are swelling the ranks of agricultural labour. Drought and failure of crops are compelling the rural labour to migrate to cities in search of livelihood.

  Added to this is the menace to and the disaster  perpetrated on the agro/rural industries owing to the withdrawal of quantitative restrictions on imports, leading to a sharp decline in the non-farm employment in the countryside. This has created a severe downward pressure on agricultural wages, spreading destitution all around. 

  The trade union movement has for long been demanding enactment of a comprehensive central legislation to guarantee minimum wage and social protection to the vast multitude of agricultural labourers. An Agricultural Workers Bill had also been drafted once but has been kept lingering for years. On its part, the NDA government has altogether refused to bring in this legislation. The Second National Commission on Labour had, though passingly, recommended introducing the pending agricultural workers bill; but it has not attracted any attention from the government. The trade union movement has to jointly mount pressure on the government to make it enact this comprehensive legislation without any further delay.

GOVT IS BUSY KILLING JOBS

4.  The united action of workers will say an emphatic no to policies that are leading to severe aggravation of joblessness and unemployment.

  Even according to the government of India, the employment in public and private organised sector has not registered any significant change over the years since 1996. In a written reply in parliament, the then minister of state, Ashok Pradhan, stated that total employment in the organised sector was 279.86 lakh in 1995 while in the year 2000 it was 279.60 lakhs. It was also admitted that 4.23 lakh employees were sent out on ‘voluntary retirement’ up to March 31, 2002.

  Recently the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, replying to the Lok Sabha debate on motion of thanks to the president for his address, claimed that his government had more or less fulfilled the National Democratic Alliance's promise of providing one crore jobs a year. Refuting the opposition’s charge that the NDA had failed to keep up its promise of creating one crore jobs a year, he indulged in some tongue-twisting that the promise was not to create one crore "government jobs" but jobs in public and private sectors.

  Mocking at this loud assertion of the prime minister, however, the recent Economic Survey has exposed the absolute decline in public sector employment by 0.9 per cent and only 0.1 per cent growth in private sector employment, which together means absolute decline in total employment, not to speak of creation of one crore jobs. Added to this, the sharp decline in the share of rural employment in total employment testifies to the unalloyed falsehood of the prime minister’s assertion. That the entire tenure of the Vajpayee regime has contributed towards destroying more job opportunities than creating new ones is also decisively proved by the sharp decline of the employment elasticity from 0.52 to mere 0.16 during 1994-2000.  In the context of such ground realities admitted by the government agencies themselves, such a false claim by the prime minister, however loudly made,  can fool nobody.

The trade union movement has been in the forefront of the struggle to foil the government’s move for downsizing the workforce and against its refusal to fill up the existing vacancies. It has demanded replacement of the policies that can at best ensure ‘jobless growth,’ by those that may help in employment generation and promote labour intensive industrial activities. The working people of the country will mobilise the youth and students of the country to demand a right to work and unemployment relief.

PRESSING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY FOR ALL

5.  Through their proposed united action, the working class will also demand a comprehensive social security schemes for all, including the workers in unorganised sectors.

Unorganised workers comprise a vast majority of the working population in the country. Sadly, however, they are not covered by the existing social security schemes. While shedding copious tears for the miserable lot of these unorganised workers, the government is not prepared to put in place a comprehensive social safety net for all workers. Even the budget proposals recently put forward by Jaswant Singh in his maiden budget envisaged that the unorganised workers would buy insurance cover, with the government proposing a pittance of Rs 100 as subsidy.

  As for the organised sector workers, the government has already initiated measures to dilute the existing social security schemes. The new recruits to the government service will not be extended any pension out of the consolidated fund of India, but will be covered by a new contributory scheme.

  The government is also seeking to tamper with the ESI and EPF schemes in the name of unpacking the benefits, with moves towards privatisation of ESI hospitals and by driving the PF and pension funds to the speculative stock market.

  The draft of the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill 2003, circulated by the government, is just a skeleton, with no concrete provisions for either income or social security. Even though the central trade unions have unanimously rejected the draft and sought substantial changes aimed at its improvement, the government is keen on arbitrarily going ahead with the bill.

  The liberalisation process has led to proliferation of the informal sector and employers are pushing more and more workers into the unorganised sector, by increasingly resorting to contracting and outsourcing of jobs. In this situation, it is imperative for the government to extend the comprehensive social security schemes to all, including  unorganised workers, covering all contingencies, viz, sickness, old age, maternity, involuntary unemployment, accident, death etc.

  ON QUANTITATIVE RESTRICTIONS

6.  The proposed action will also press for restoration of quantitative restrictions on imports, which are proving increasingly detrimental to our economy.

  As a part of the new economic policies, the government of India has embarked on implementing the dictates of the World Trade Organisation. It has removed the quantitative restrictions on imports of a very large number of commodities and has also lowered the import tariffs. These measures have resulted in an immense harm to the national economy, by making imports cheaper and domestic products costlier. Agriculture as well as traditional and small scale industries are worst affected in the process. Peasants are forced to commit suicide. Industrial sickness is proliferating, leading to closure of thousands of units. Foreign multinational companies are acquiring patent rights for our traditional products and forcing the indigenous producers out of the market, both internally and in exports.

  The NDA government had been in an undue hurry to remove the quantitative restrictions and reduce the import tariffs, much ahead of even what had been committed to the WTO. While the developed countries continue with huge subsidies for their own products, they dictate the Indian government to slash down subsidies for our products. Successive rounds of negotiations in the WTO forum are being utilised to turn the terms of international trade more favourable to the developed countries. The negotiators on behalf of the Indian government only meekly surrender to such dictates.

  The entire trade union movement is demanding the restoration of quantitative restrictions on imports in order to save our own industry and agriculture from utter ruination. The government must also be prevented from surrendering to the developed countries and further compromising our interests during the forthcoming WTO ministerial meeting at Cancun (Mexico).

  SAY NO TO FRAUD ON WORKERS

7.  Yet, another major demand of the trade union movement is for an amendment to the  Payment of Bonus Act by removing all ceilings.

  The present provisions in the Bonus Act, with the income ceilings for eligibility and calculation of bonus, have virtually pushed out an overwhelming majority of workers, almost the entire organised sector, outside the purview of the Bonus Act. Every year, the government calls for comments from trade unions, employers and state governments on the question of enhancing the ceiling limit, which is nothing but an eyewash.

Recently, a private member’s bill was moved in parliament, proposing the removal of the existing ceiling of Rs 3500 wage as the eligibility criterion for bonus and for extending the coverage to every employee in the undertaking. But the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM),  articulating the views of the trade and industry, said the proposed amendment would be disastrous in the present intense competitive environment where many marginal units are struggling for survival. While the employers are pressing for amendments to the labour laws to confer on them the right to ‘hire and fire’, they are opposing even the limited recommendation of the Second National Commission on Labour for raising the ceiling level for payment of bonus from Rs 2500 to Rs 3500 and for eligibility limit from Rs 3500 to Rs 7500.

But the trade union movement has been unanimously in its demand for total removal of all the ceilings in the Bonus Act.

 8.  The trade union movement is also in favour of restoration of 12 per cent interest rate on provident fund deposits. 

  During the course of the last few years, the government has reduced the interest rates on small savings, provident fund etc from 12 per cent to a mere 8 per cent in this year’s budget. The government is one of the beneficiaries of this process, which reduces its interest burden, even through it means depriving the workers of an adequate return on their life-long savings. While the government has been conferring upon the rich huge benefits by way of incentives and tax concessions running into several lakh crores of rupees, it is out to cheat the workers. The lower interest rate regime has not resulted in any new investment or employment generation, but has only helped the employers to maximise their profits even with a reduced turnover. On the other hand, the small scale and traditional sector industries, which are in a deep crisis, do not get access to bank credit, because of the rigorous norms being applied by the banking industry.

  The trade union movement has, in one voice, demanded that the interest rate on provident fund, as also on small savings, should be restored to 12 per cent, at the least.

  FORCE GOVT TO RETHINK

These are the common minimum demands unitedly placed by the entire spectrum of the trade union movement in India. Besides these common demands, the trade unions in various industries, regions and states have come together to carry on joint struggles on their sectional demands. The May 21 general strike would be a culmination of all these struggles, and the workers toiling in factories, offices and fields must all be rallied to join this mainstream struggle, so that the government of India is forced to rethink its disastrous policies and pay heed to the demands of the united working class movement. To this end, a wide campaign and preparatory actions should be planned and implemented all over the country during the intervening period.