14th. Dec 06 - A Strike Again

The Central TU organisations controlled by the parliamentary left parties and their allies have again called a general strike on 14th Dec '06 . We have witnessed such strikes more or less annually or at least biennially with almost similar or related set of demands since the early 1990s. In the October 2002 issue of our journal, we had a thorough and detailed discussion on such 1-day All India strikes called by the TU organisations controlled by the parliamentary lefts. [That article, “A Review of ‘One Day Bandh' as a Form of Movement” is available online at www.foraproletarianparty.net.] We could have refrained from commenting again on the same subject unnecessarily wasting papers and ink had there been no farther degenerations of those parliamentary lefts, such utter degenerations that made their call extra-farcical than before, and had there been no further signs of the slow-but-steady regeneration of workers struggles at the other end, defying those established parties and unions, which call for more attention and effort of the revolutionary proletariat. In this present discussion, we shall probe only four aspects to comprehend the revolutionary proletarian view about this strike and strikes similar to this. Those aspects are: [one] who are calling the strike, their credibility, their actual role; [two] what happened to the strikes called by them, their positive and negative consequences; [three] other kind of strikes and actions not under their control, their significance and our duty; [four] the danger in the hesitant notion that ‘at least these strikes are some protests, and so, to be supported', ‘we should call upon the workers to make this strike militant…' etc.

Who Are Calling This Strike, Their Credibility & Actual Role

From the CPIM's journal Peoples' Democracy of 30.07.06 [from http://pd.cpim.org] we get: “ORGANISED on July 25 by the Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions, a united platform of struggle against the neo-liberal economic policies, the National Convention of Workers has chalked out a series of action programmes that would be culminating in an All-India General Strike on December 14 coming. …The convention was called to plan for a countrywide movement for intensifying the united struggle against price rise, disinvestments and privatisation, against the ban on recruitment, anti-worker labour law changes, outsourcing of work and contractisation, and to press for employment generation as well as comprehensive legislative enactments for unorganised and agricultural sector workers. ” Perhaps they would like to include SEZ issue while themselves selling out large tracts of lands, mostly fertile, to native and foreign capitalists in their ruled West Bengal at much subsidised and ‘[business]-secret' price, creating many real as well as virtual SEZ [ e.g. for the tata house, the salim group of Indonesia ] for them, showering tax and other ‘[business]-secret' exemptions/benefits to those capitalists at the cost of the state, etc. However, the Congress understood very well that Congress and Lefts have only minor quantitative differences on the issue of SEZ and they quickly adjusted to the ‘West Bengal Model of SEZ' taking the winds out of the Lefts' sail on this issue.

Everybody knows that since 1991 “price rise, disinvestments and privatisation, against the ban on recruitment, anti-worker labour law changes, outsourcing of work and contractisation” etc, and giving the capitalists green signal to exploit workers more ruthlessly than before, are more of a product of and have become more acute by the New Economic Policy adapted by the govt in the early nineties, matching with the Globalisation-Liberalisation policies dictated by the imperialists. These pseudo-lefts blame the Congress govt for it. All the same, these very parties follow the same policies wherever and whenever they are in charge of state governments, and supported the so-called third-front govt in the mid 1990s that actively promoted those very policies, with some of them like the CPI sitting in the central cabinet. Not only this, these very parties are culprit for the same allegation that they make against the Congress: without their tacit and cunning ‘walk-outs on protest' in the early 1990s during voting inside the parliament the then minority Congress govt in the parliament could not pass a single plan according to that policy. Their tactic is: Let the Congress form the govt, let them do whatever they like including adapting all sorts of anti-people policies; these pseudo-lefts will give only verbal opposition while actually following those same policies where and when they are running state governments, and play the same old game of staging dramas like ‘human-chains', ‘massive demonstrations', rallies etcetera using their affluent party machinery, …and at maximum a 1-day All India Strike. What else they do everywhere? Let us see.

While judging their real role, examples of West Bengal , or, where they are in govt, are not the only or decisive ones . In Assam CPI was a part of the AGP govt in the late 1990s and CPIM gave support ‘from outside'. During this regime, a good part of the state owned co-op production and distribution units were deliberately made sick and eventually privatised. Where were left ‘movements' against all these? In the Tea Gardens, fringe benefits curtailment started. Were there any real moves by those left unions? From the Far East of India if we move to West we shall see same dismal role of those left TU orgs and particularly the CITU: During 2005 there were numerous assaults on the workers of Ludhiana in Punjab where the CITU obliquely helped the management, e.g., in Hero Cycles, Avon Cycles, etcetera, where permanent labourers were ousted and contract workers were engaged. If we move closer to the Capital, Delhi , in the Shahibabad Industrial zone the CITU played the same game of taming workers to gulp down retrenchment/VRS of permanent workers and induction of contract labourers, e.g., Hero Cycles. If we go to North, to the Himachal Pradesh , we shall see the role [or tacit tactic] CITU is leaving the workers disarrayed and defenceless in front of the fierce offensive of the capitalists, as for example, in Baddi Industrial area, where the fighting workers can no more put faith on these established left TU organisations. Going to South we can meet the fighting Toyota workers in Karnataka where they fought going beyond the prototype of ‘movement' as set by the “gentlemen & responsible” union-bosses of CITU, as the Honda workers did in Haryana – the AITUC never dares to do such a fight, and where the govt-capitalist-TU nexus drew an anti-worker ‘settlement'. Among the “Central” cases we can also find not a few such examples: one glaring example being making the workers compliant to accept 10-years'-agreement instead of 5-years ones in all the major Public Sector Units barring a few by a ‘token strike' last time and then leaving the issue altogether.

Their ‘anti-imperialism' is even more farcical: well-decorated demo against imperialism and at the same time inviting with red carpet Trans National Capital, the pillars of imperialism, to invest and suck up natural and human resources in the states run by them, virtually prohibiting workers' struggles including strikes in those establishments by coercion of Party-TU-Corporate-Govt nexus! They are so apt in this virtual-ban game that they did not need any labour law change! The throbbing sponge-iron sector at durgapur industrial belt is a crude example of virtual absence of any labour-laws or environment-laws. Then, how one can believe that they want to fight “ …disinvestments and privatisation, …the ban on recruitment ” etc when they are doing the same in WB? They planned to wipe out about half a dozen villages in bankura district to open up new coal mines not for the nationalised ECIL, but for the bengal emta group controlled by a private company and owned partially by the state govt! They are practising contract-out of State Electricity Board jobs since long, to this plan they have added a great fillip recently by renaming contracting-out as development of Self-Help-Groups, and even school/college teachers are hired contractually at negligible salary!! They are now trying downsizing the govt to the extent of redeploying perhaps thousands of govt employees to panchayat s and zilla–parishad s! A sizeable part of State Surface Transport fleet is already contracted out. Even since the 1980s, the big corporate houses, including foreign multinationals like bata , hll , etc, are practising farming-out with tacit understanding and help of these left parties. During past 10 years what they call ‘contractistion' is virtually the norm in newly established factories in their ruled state. If these people call a strike against those very practices, can any worker put confidence on their intention to fight?

What Happened to Their Past Strikes [and their Strike Calls]

We find in that same article of Peoples' Democracy: “…The National Convention of Workers and its clarion call for an all-India general strike in December strongly reflect the fighting mood of the working people throughout the country…. It was also a reflection of the firm resolve of the workers to wage an unrelenting fight in the immediate future.” But what happened in the past strikes and also in cases of the call of those strikes that did not took place at all?

Within this year 2006, we saw two farcical strike-episodes led indirectly by these parties. [1] A railway strike that never happened – after a fanfare of strike-ballots – only with the govt saying that it will consider formation of a new Pay Commission; and everybody knows what a Pay Commission really does particularly after the last notorious Pay Commission report for the railways – it wring out more form workers than it give out. [2] And then there was the drama of Airport strike keeping the air-traffic-control out of the strike – they actually started the strike with the very intention of withdrawing that with slightest pretext! With the determination of becoming responsible trade unions and business friendly govt, these pseudo lefts cannot afford to halt business actually, going beyond ritualistic and deceptive opposition.

In 2005, we had an All India Strike on 29th September; in 2004, the All India Strike was observed on 24th February; in 2003, there was the 21st May strike…. On 24/2/04 , Tapan Sen wrote proudly in CPIM organ Peoples Democracy “ 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. ” Therefore, we are now going to have the Eleventh All India Strike in some 13-14 years or so! Well, “unrelenting fight” it is indeed that did not help generate spontaneous upsurge of workers' fights, never created enthusiasm to fight implementation of those policies in their work-places, in their shop-floors, their factories; neither these strikes made any impact on policy making of the ruling class – which has become more and more ruthless with their reforms , nor these strikes paved way for furthering class struggle – rather the workers are pushed back more and more by assaults of the capitalists. All these happened because each of such All India Strikes was not a centralisation cum culmination of scattered workers' struggles in factories or industries, as a development to a higher level of a country wide working class struggle, which in turn would have provided further impetus and strength for struggles below…. All such strikes came as a planned move from above to contain the simmering discontent among the workers within the boundary of ‘law and order' permissible by a bourgeois state – in an organised manner. Correctly speaking, these routine strikes are only to hoodwink the working class and to conceal naked betrayal of these parties and their trade unions in plant level actual resistance struggle. It has been the experience that these TU organisations blocked any chance of workers fight against implementation of those policies in their work place, in their shop floors, their factories; thus making their annual 1 day All India Strikes more farcical, and what is more dangerous, cunning deception of the workers.

The Other Kind of Workers' Actions beyond the Control of ‘Lefts' & Their Significance

Since early nineties, i.e., within a few years of the implementation of the New Economic Policy, India is witnessing the slow germination of other kind of struggles, also organisations, of the workers beyond the control of these degenerated renegade organisations. There are broadly two types of such struggles: [A] workers struggles exploded and new fighting TU organisations formed, e.g., in Garden Reach Shipbuilders in 1992… …Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation in 2006, and in some cases without creating any organisations whatsoever, like in the Jute Industry, till now; and [B] workers took actions and burst into struggles in such way that are not confined within the lakshman rekha [border line] drawn by those ‘old' established Trade Unions, they built up their fights almost independently, though they carried the ‘old' banners, e.g., in Honda, Toyota, etc. The workers rebelled against the passivity and underhand collaborationist role of the established TU organisations and in not a few cases their rebellion was first directed against those organisations and leaders.

The readers can see that we deliberately did not include in the aforementioned fights and organisations developing from below [a] the unions and struggles of workers developed via a prolonged effort of the advanced workers along with revolutionary communist activists, in many cases through ‘fractional' activities, prior to the 1990s, and of course [b] those paper-unions created by many CR organisations with poor minority of workers, sometimes a few dozens in a factory of few thousands, just to show that more number of unions were under them, and in most cases those unions are tailing the major established bigger unions. We are concerned here mainly the concrete trend of development of workers' struggles and organisations from below in the condition of [1] defeat of the first offensive of the international communist movement, [2] a low ebb of workers struggle that set in roughly from the mid 1980s, and [3] party-less-ness, i.e., absence of a real all-India proletarian party and a central TU that could have helped the development of workers' struggles and organisations from below .

Revolutionary proletariat must give utmost attention to this actually developing trend of the workers' fights and organisations from below, must help those fights, organisations and the advanced workers of these struggles: so that they can run independently their TU organisations themselves, so that they can keep, uphold and advance this ‘new' trend by maintaining a clear-cut demarcation with the ‘old' revisionist-reformist trend, and lastly, so that they can develop class consciousness and thus become elements of the future proletarian party. To emphasise an important aspect of this task that is sometimes forgotten by CR activists: It is not only important to demarcate organisationally from the ‘old' established Trade Unions, that is rather a starting point; what is more imperative is to demarcate from ‘old' practices, ways of thought, ideas, etc inherited from those rotten ‘old' unions, some examples being dependence on ‘outside' non-worker TU-skilled ‘ babu ' leaders, reliance on Courts & Legal Battles, than on the struggle of the workers themselves, etc, which all are expressions of bourgeois revisionist politics. In this sphere, the CR activists have much to do. The CR activists should help the workers build Trade Union as ‘school of communism'. To carry on all these tasks it is necessary to keep ‘independent and separate' political flag of proletarian politics unfurled, ‘independent and separate' from bourgeois – petit-bourgeois politics; it is all the more so in this present political juncture when the right swing is at sway on the society overall and the revolutionary proletarian movement is, to say the least, extremely weak.

The Danger in the Hesitant Notion: “At least these strikes are some protests, fights, and so to be supported”

Sadly, many TU organisations run by activists of different groups who claim to be revolutionary communists [CR groups] support these All India Strikes, with some of them even staying within the CPIM dominated Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions itself! But what they do not understand or de facto ignore are: the conspiratorial role of those established lefts and their game plan including such worthless ‘strikes', the sheer impossibility of these strikes to help develop working class struggle that has been proved by 10 such All India strikes called by them in past 12 years , the importance of the ‘separate and independent' platform of the revolutionary proletariat, and thus, lastly, this ‘support' de facto means going against, working against the interest of the new emerging trend of workers' struggles. Standing united with the betrayers, conspirators, joining voice with them is such farcical and deceptive ‘Strike' call do not work and can never work in the interest of the development of class struggle, rather they work counter to that development. Such follies bewilder the upcoming fighting workers, confuse them politically and hinder political development of them. Even if some sections of workers do some ‘militant' actions on that strike day, the qualitative character of this kind of strikes does not change: they remain conspiracies hatched from above to deceive the class, and at best, safety-valves of the unrest accumulating below. No worker will be strike-breaker, but no conscious and fighting worker should ‘support' such conspiracies and deceptions. One day, in future, this emerging but still slow trend of workers' struggle will develop and call for a countrywide general strike as centralisation of their scattered struggles: that will be the real general strike. Let us work for those days to come.

 

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