Mr B.T. Ranadive, well-known trade union and CPM leader, passed away this month 30 years ago in 1990. I still remember walking in the heat as part of his funeral procession from the CITU office in Worli to Dadar. It was an unusually long procession.

Trade unions still held a strong position in society then. But even back then, the mainstream media was not very supportive. I recall covering a well-attended,  CITU conference at the Shanmukhananda hall, Matunga.  Yet, the day after the inaugural session, the Times of India where I worked, did not carry any report. The TOI had a strong CITU union at the time. I think someone spoke to chairman Ashok Jain and subsequently a report appeared.

In the  subsequent era of neoliberalism, union busting became common, it became fashionable among intellectuals to run down the struggle for workers’ rights. Of course, they were handsomely rewarded for their loyalty to the establishment and for their betrayal of people. The most naked example at the government level was the Exit Policy in the nineties which favoured a hire and fire policy. For some years there was not even a cabinet rank labour minister in the state. There used to be a lower rank minister with the status of minister with independent charge.

But then the stark visuals of  the trek  of  long lines of migrant labour from different parts of the country worked like an eye opener. The harsh reality (of their lives) could no longer be ignored. 

It was good to see the bow tie wearing columnist and television interviewer express so much sympathy for workers in a recent interview with an academic. Mr Karan Thapar has changed so much for the better in the last few years. There is a sea change in public perception of labour: we seem suddenly to have become aware of their version of the  tragedy, the problems they face and their overall exploitation.

This is  an interesting phenomenon on the eve of May Day, traditionally a day of assertion of working class solidarity.  There is now the very real possibility of a solidarity being built with other sections as well. Every one is going to be hit now with the exception of the one percent who have fattened themselves at our expense and who pose a serious threat to democracy. Unfortunately, this is also a sad time as there is massive unemployment already and wages are being cut. 

There are various historical versions and accounts around the origin of May Day. Rosa Luxemberg, the renowned radical thinker has said the struggle to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided, in 1856, to organise a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day. The day chosen for this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for that year, that is 1856. But the first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass work stoppage on which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea of a proletarian celebration was quickly and widely accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.

The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day 200,000 of them left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented the workers for many years from repeating this demonstration. However in 1888 they renewed their decision and decided that the next celebration would be May 1, 1890.

The movement grew stronger over the next few decades

(There have been minor edits made to the original)­

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While the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration must be looking forward to its first ever Ramayana inspired webinar titled: ‘Leadership lessons through Ramayana’, the students it hopes to educate seem far from amused. The online seminar will be conducted on May 2 and 3 and is only open to JNU students, staff and teachers who have to register for access. The announcement was made a few days ago by the vice chancellor himself and got a lot of media attention. 

Even JNU’s Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, hopes that his students make sure they log on and attend this webinar and learn some ‘leadership lessons,’ from Ramayana the JNU Students Union has issued a statement on how they interpret the “priorities” of their university administration.

“We definitely hope that wherever the JNU administration and the Vice Chancellor are deriving their ‘leadership prowess’ from, it helps them to focus on the issues faced by the students and workers employed in JNU.” 

The JNUSU says that the university has already seen “a failure of leadership on issues of a serious nature. Leadership requires a sense of responsibility and care for the constituents you are assigned to serve.”

The students’ union also addressed the media, as many had dutifully reported that the seminar would be held, though it is not known yet if some friendly journalists may even be invited to attend the seminar as guests. The students union has asked the media to also focus equally on the grave issues which should be addressed by JNU administration on a priority basis.

JNU admin’s leadership failure?

It is International Workers’ Day,  May Day, and Labour Day, but at JNU the daily wage workers including sanitation workers, laborers and those employed in various manual jobs on contractual basis have not been paid by the administration states the JNUSU. The workers have apparently not been paid their salaries of up to three months. “The JNU administration and the companies which provide the contractual staff for housekeeping and sanitation- *Max, and Bedi & Bedi in particular,* are doing a back and forth of putting the blame on each other and hence denying workers their salary. On top of that, the supervisors and the company management are compounding the misery of the workers by making a lot of workers go back without marking their attendance when they travel from far off places. This makes them miss out on their daily wage,” alleged the JNUSU on record.

This of course is also in violation of the Union Government’s Covid-19 lockdown guidelines on engaging and paying labourers even on days they have to stay at home and follow all the lockdown protocols. The JNUSU has also alleged that even though labourers are coming to work as easily as 5 am, many of them are being “marked absent”. 

“This treatment of workers who are vulnerable is an absolute scandal and the companies *Max, Bedi & Bedi* as well as the JNU administration should be ashamed of themselves for treating workers this way,” stated JNUSU.

The webinar will go live on May 2 and 3 from 4 pm to 6 p.m and is “strictly for JNU Faculty, Staff and Students.” It has been organised by JNU’s School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies and School of Sanskrit & Indic Studies. It will be conducted by Professor Santosh Kumar Shukla from JNU’s School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies and Professor Mazha Asif from School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies. This Ramayana inspired leadership webinar is a collaboration with The Ramayana School. 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/theramayanaschool/photos/?ref=page_internal

For the skeptics and the rationalists who may criticise his inspiration for the webinar, Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, quotes Mahatma Gandhi as saying: “About Rama, in 1946, Mahatma Gandhi said: He is one without a second. He alone is great. There is none greater than He. He is timeless, formless, stainless. Such is my Rama. He alone is my Lord and Master.”  

The JNUSU has also reminded everyone that the university administration had recently conducted an Academic Council meeting online to discuss the academic period lost due to the lockdown. However the students, who are directly affected, were not asked for their suggestions.

“Shamefully, again no suggestions were taken from the elected JNUSU as the representatives of the stakeholders- the students who are going to be most affected,” stated JNUSU. 

However the JNU administration had released a timetable which the students alleged is far from understanding ground realities. They say the  administration is “conjuring up dates in thin air” even as the intensity of cases of the Covid-19 pandemic increases. 

JNU has not proposed that students get back by June, and in the meanwhile continue with online classes. “Ludicrous suggestions of conducting synopsis related RAC online and keeping the returning students two weeks in isolation (knowing full well the logistical non starter that such a proposal without any preparation would be) shows that not only were suggestions not taken, there was scant preparation of detailed study of the crisis by the administration appointed Deans of Schools,” stated the JNUSU, “overall the administration is at sea and unprepared for detailing a return to academics that does not cause any inconvenience to the students.” 

The JNUSU has demanded that the JNU administration consult the stakeholders regarding issues related to lag in academics and provide relief to workers at the earliest. 

Related:

Lockdown special: JNU webinar on Leadership through Ramayana 

Saptapadi: Modi’s se7en steps to fighting Covid-19

Light diya, manifest collective superpower, boost morale: Modi

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This May Day, May 1, 2016, Spent With the Coal Mining Workers of the Northern Coal Fields

Singrauli, Rewa Distirct Madhya Pradesh

This is how India's Coal Mining is Done and How Its Workers Mine the Coal

Singrauli MP Dudhichua

Singrauli MP Dudhichua

Singrauli MP Dudhichua

Where is Dudhichua Singrauli MP ?

The post इस मई दिवस पर नार्दर्न कोल फील्ड सिंगरौली के कोयला मजदूरों के बीच !! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

And Who Made this Possible?

Reclaim Rights of Workers – Reclaim Rights of All

In the late 18th century, when companies started to maximise the output of their factories, companies attempted to maximize the output of their factories by keeping them running as many hours as possible, typically implementing a “sun up to sun down” work day. Wages were also extremely low, so workers themselves often needed to work these long shifts just to get by, including often sending their children to work in the factories as well, rather than getting them educated. With little representation, education, or options, factory workers also tended to work in horrible working conditions to go along with the bad hours. The typical work day at this time lasted anywhere from 10-18 hours per day, six days a week.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that May 1, 1886 ( Haymarket affair ) would be the first day that an eight hour work day would be made mandatory. when May 1, 1886 arrived, the first ever May Day parade was held with 350,000 workers walking off their jobs protesting for the eight hour work day. there were perhaps twice as many people out on the streets participating in various demonstrations and marches.
 
The participants in these events added up to 80,000 Haymarket affair – It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they acted to disperse the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded.

India Today

This May Day, 2016, under a Regime committed to curtail the rights of the working class, it is time to remember all those movements which made this possible and to remember all those brave people who stood with vision , fought for it .. so that generations can reap a healthy, all rounded, life

Yet the governments ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and most recently Maharashtra have followed the ‘Rajasthan’ model making substantive changes in laws that have undermined the critical workers rights including on factory closure and on workplace health and safety.

We gather every year across the country today to salute the martyrs who gave up their lives in the struggle for an 8 hour workday over a hundred years ago and the countless women and men who have made and continue to make enormous sacrifice in the struggle to advance the rights of the working class. As we do so on this May Day, we also evaluate the challenges before us and our ability to address these.

Government’s agenda: Take from Workers – and give to Capital
The NDA II –BJP– government when it came to power a year ago set itself the task to weaken laws that define workers rights, including trade union and collective bargaining rights and the laws that regulate the workplace, through amendment of existing laws or through new legislation. While these proposals remain on the table, the significant changes the BJP government had hoped to bring forward have not yet found their way through parliament. In some measure this is because of the united action of trade unions including through the successful country-wide general strike on 2 September last year.

Yet the governments ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and most recently Maharashtra have followed the ‘Rajasthan’ model making substantive changes in laws that have undermined the critical workers rights including on factory closure and on workplace health and safety.

This, of course, does not mean that the BJP led union government has given up its plans to lower the threshold of workers’ rights. Having used the ordinance mechanism in the first year in government, the BJP has now turned to the mechanism of ‘executive orders’. Legislatively guaranteed retirement (Employee Provident Fund) and healthcare (Employee State Insurance) provisions have been changed through executive orders. Although in the case of the EPF the critical changes have been reversed, now for the third time, most notably through the remarkable protest led by garment workers in Bengaluru and elsewhere in Karnataka, the intent of the BJP government very clear.

It will seek every possible route, including unilateral actions, to undermine workers rights and it will do everything within its power to move workers out of legislatively guaranteed social security towards arrangements that are guided by market forces and bring profit to private sector. This is not just part of the ideological core of the BJP but the inability to deliver this would undermine the BJP government’s capacity to move on its key proposals for liberalising markets further. Savings of wage workers and their healthcare expenditure constitute large volumes of money. So long as these remain within the domain of legislative guarantee and therefore within the public sector, the privatisation of the financial sector will remain incomplete. Hence the BJP government must force this shift if it is to succeed in accomplishing its task of opening up the mainstay of our economy.

The BJP government has not restricted itself to only PF and ESI. Through two successive union budgets, the government has in real terms forced wages down by effectively freezing wages of ‘honorarium workers’ and restricting government expenditure on social security and social protection. In the last month, the promise of enhanced minimum wages notwithstanding, the BJP has caused to force down wages further by notifying wages under the NREGA at levels lower than the lowest (agricultural) minimum wage in many states.

For the BJP government, wages must be driven by market forces. Wages must indeed be kept down since the agricultural sector is in crisis and industrial production remains low. The most recent data shows that employment is on a decline: workers are not just losing permanent jobs, the number of available jobs on contract too is declining. Despite this and the drought situation in about half the country, the BJP government is still unwilling to address the question of livelihood and wages.
Law is more than Intention

For the BJP government, its intention is law and that is what it has signaled to the private sector. There is a wilful violation of existing laws. There is perhaps no employer, public or private – multinational or Indian, in the country today that is not violating labour laws. And both the BJP government at the centre and state governments are now actively engaged in allowing these violations. All sections of the working class movement have effectively resisted this and have been faced with an even greater offensive.

If until now government assisted employers in violating the right to freedom of association, today government is at the forefront in violating the right to free speech and free assembly. If until now government broke trade union struggles through employing the police in making preventive arrests, today government is actively engaged in trumping up charges so as to employ criminal law to put away activists who use democratic means of dissent against government actions.

The BJP’s attack is however not restricted to workers and peasants. It seeks to change the very notion of what a nation is and what citizenship means.
In its first year in government the BJP enforced a ‘ban’ on beef. The government effectively told us what we can and cannot eat. In the past few months through its efforts to put down students, even pushing them to their death, if they ask for what is rightfully theirs or who express a views that may be at variance with the BJP, government is effectively telling us what we can say and what we cannot and what we allowed to think and what we must not think. This, the BJP must do because it not just seeks to ensure that wages are reduced to increase profits but it seeks to alter the rules of our society by taking away the rights of those who are underprivileged and hence discriminated by class, caste, religion, gender and region. This is the India that the BJP seeks to make.

Stop the Attack on Workers – Resist and Reclaim
We have between us led many struggles in the past year. Some of them have been successful in bringing long awaited relief. We have seen an enormous resistance across the country in response to the BJP governments attack on democratic rights be they in economic, social or political life.

Across the world and in the region there is, today, a rise of conservative politics that promotes individual liberty over collective rights, private sector expansion, free markets and social and political values that artificially presupposes homogeneity amongst peoples negating the enormous diversity of peoples within societies and countries and a strong national defence. This comes with a sharpened attack on institutional social protection and security, on role of public sector and therefore on democratic rights. While in the Global North, this attack manifests itself against immigrants, against religious minorities, mostly muslims, in our own country the attack has manifest itself against migrant workers mostly dalits and adivasis and against muslims (who together constitute nearly 40% of our population) – all leading to widespread xenophobia.

Our resistance, therefore, in the coming days, has to be stronger and more united and more focused to ensure that every person irrespective of class or community enjoys the right to free speech, the right to free assembly and the right to form or join an association of their own choice. In whichever country we may be in, we join them in solidarity for it is together and together alone united in our strength and purpose, both at home and abroad, will we succeed in our resolve to:

On this May Day we need to reclaim
The Right to Free Speech
The Right to Freedom of Assembly
The Right to Freedom of Association
 

(Based on a statement of the National Trade Union Initiative)
 

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