People's Democracy

Forward To August 8 Countrywide Strike of the Unorganised Sector Workers

P K Ganguly

The CITU general council in its meeting held at Kolkata from May 27-30, 2007, gave a stirring call for a countrywide strike of the unorganised sector workers on August 8, 2007.

This will be the second all India strike in the unorganised sector, the first strike having been held on July 14, 1993. But the August 8 strike will be in real sense a countrywide strike, because during this period, the CITU has penetrated into a very large section of the unorganised sector, both in the various manufacturing units, as well as in other sections in all the states of the country. Over 60 per cent of CITU’s membership comes from the unorganised sector. So the entire organisation, from the centre to the states, to the districts, the federations and the unions are involved in this nationwide strike.

The call for the strike was given in pursuance of the decisions of the CITU’s Firozabad convention, which called for a march to parliament followed by a countrywide strike.

Change in Production Centres

It is pertinent to note that the capitalist development strategies earlier were largely oriented towards modern large scale industries, generally termed as the formal or organised sector. The unorganised sector or the informal sector, as it is termed by the ILO, consisting of a large number of small scale and tiny units, cottage industries, traditional and ancillary units, etc., was existing on the fringes of its parent, the robust organised sector.

With the deepening crisis in the capitalist system, the modus operandi of production and exploitation have changed according to the needs of imperialist bourgeoisie for the sustenance of capitalism. With liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, the production centres are undergoing sea-change with a transnational global economy. The hitherto ignored informal sector has now ceased to be the earlier not too serious small units existing on the fringes of their parent, organised sector. It is now threatening the very existence of the parent.

The list of this sprawling sector is never ending as per even the first National Commission of Labour (1969). Apart from agriculture, it consists of manufacturing units like beedi, handloom, powerloom, garments, brick-kiln, cashew, coir, carpet, small chemicals, quarries, matches, firework, tanneries, glass, bangle making, potteries, diamond and gem cutting and so on. Equally vast are the non-manufacturing sections like contract, casual workers, loading-unloading workers, hawkers, self-employed, home based workers, etc.

This vast unorganised sector contributes about 65 per cent of the country’s GDP and over 35 percent of exports. And most importantly, it covers over 93 per cent of the Indian working class, who are the classical blue collared proletariat.

Vulnerable Forms of Employment

Contrary to the views expressed by the protagonists of reforms, the unorganised sector is neither innovative, nor full of job opportunities. Being already overcrowded, it cannot absorb the multitude of workers thrown out from the organised sector due to structural adjustment programme. The process on the contrary has manifested itself in the growth of more vulnerable forms of employment and income erosion. In the context of globalisation and entry of Indian and foreign monopolists, with the implementation of measures like dereservation of items of production in this sector and withdrawal of quantitative restrictions on imports along with either withdrawal or reduction of customs duties, it has become a criminal mode of exploitation and social exclusion in this sector.

With low capital investments and with no labour laws, social security, minimum wage or employment security, this sector has became a haven to garner profits by the monopolists. Incomes of the workers are mostly below poverty line. Tens of thousands of children, often as young as four year old, work in this sector due to grinding poverty of the families. If one wants to see the poverty of the Indian people, he has to see the vast workforce in this sector from state to state. In the largest democracy of the world, there is no rule of law but only jungle raj rules for the 93 per cent of the workforce.

So the question of a comprehensive central legislation, of continuing employment and wages according to the needs of the families are vital for the vast multitude of the workforce in this sector. One has to accept that secured employment and need based wages to thwart poverty are the two most important components of real social security of all apart from other measures. The workers have to achieve them through bitter struggles, rejecting the government’s move to foist a fraudulent legislation on them.

Intensification of Struggle

Quite often we quote the fundamental rights from the constitution to establish our right to form unions and launch strike struggles. But it may also be pertinent to draw attention to the directive principles of state policy to launch struggles under constitutional rights to compel the government to change its policies according to the constitutional directives. Article 43 states: “The State shall endeavour to secure by suitable legislation or economic organisation or any other way, to all workers, agricultural, industrial or otherwise, work, a living wage, conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life and full of enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities.” But the state policies are just the reverse and that exactly is our fighting point. The government having embarked on the path of capitalist development, the conditions of all workers, agricultural, industrial or otherwise have been worsening since the enshrinement of the constitution, and the policies generate more unemployment and more poverty.

Since its formation, the CITU has been pinpointing this factor and working assiduously to organise the unorganised sector workers in a planned manner and bring them under the vortex of struggles. The CITU has also been urging the workers in the organised sector to take up the cause of the unorganised sector workers and lend active support to their struggles. If the organised sector workers actively join the struggles of the teeming millions of the unorganised sector, then the working class struggle as a whole will take the shape of mass actions by the class and tend to change the correlation of class forces in the country.

The August 8 countrywide strike gives an opportunity to consolidate such class unity and shape the future struggles of the working masses. Forward to this countrywide salvo on August 8 by all sections of the unorganised sector workers and make it total and visible on the streets in each and every state.