Resolution No. 1

Imperialist Globalisation, Working People’s Movement and Trade Union Unity

The one and a half decade of policy changes induced by imperialist globalization has resulted in:

  • Occupational dislocation, unemployment and low growth of employment;
  • Industrial closure, downsizing and retrenchment;
  • Destruction of productive capacities and livelihoods;
  • Creation of low-quality employment resulting from increased casualisation and contractualisation of employment, denial of labour rights, increasing violation of occupational health & safety norms, and intensification of labour exploitation;
  • Privatisation and induction of labour displacing technologies;
  • Industrialisation through SEZs enclaves, where foreign and domestic capital are provided with special incentives, tax evasions and lax labour law implementation;
  • Increase in the disparity of income and concentration of wealth.

In all, labour and working people had a very unfair deal in the process of economic liberalization.

The UPA Government was formed in 2004 in the wake of massive rejection of these policies, and rebuttal of the falseness of the ‘India Shining’ slogan. But the new government continued along this orientation. Whereas the NDA was focused on dismantling the state’s role in public sector and retreat of the state from economic development, the UPA focused on a policy of promoting and expanding private sector through subsidy augmentation, and expanding the scope of private investment through public-private partnership, even in public services, especially in education and health.

Both the BJP and the Congress have a broad consensus on the neoliberal, pro-imperialist economic policy. However, the present economic crisis and its impact on the Indian economy, as well as opposition in parliament and more militant and persistent resistance outside it, has forced the UPA government to retreat. It has reluctantly been forced to accept state intervention in the economy, fiscal expansion, and public investment.

The Congress in response to the struggle and demands of the people has generally pursued a policy of pragmatic secularism and has been open to a pluralistic conception of nation building. The UPA with its long political experience invested in political management of discontent and opposition and put in place a programme that addressed the extreme forms of poverty. This has resulted in major legislative gains in the area of NREGA, Forest Act and Right to Information.

NTUI views the role of trade union movement firstly to contend with, and confront, the market fundamentalist ideological discourse that infuses the government thinking and policies; and secondly to resist, and also force changes, in the policies, laws and regulations arising from such orientation.

In addressing the second task, the nature of government formation, space for policy making, and the instrument of intervention acquire significance. The emergence of the CMP was a result of the 2004 general election and the government formation of the UPA. But, it was not a proactive decision emerging out of strategic consideration. The CMP resulted from an ad hoc action in relation to the fractured mandate of the people and the problems of government formation. Nevertheless, the CMP was a positive outcome from people’s perspective. It opened up a possibility for intervention in framing public policies to address the immediate needs of people, and it is in the interest of people that this tool of intervention in the political arena is sustained.

Such a possibility can arise only when:

  • No single party dominates parliament, and the BJP-led NDA coalition or Congress-led UPA do not emerge as a majority to form the government.
  • The non-NDA and non-UPA political forces are significant enough to precipitate a crisis in government formation. In many ways, their capacity to force new version of CMP would only be possible on the strength and vision of people’s movement.
  • There is a wide movement and more intervention in electoral arena by mass organisations with specific demands and expectation from the new government.

The weakness of the parliamentary left, as a force in the society, has brought a disjunction between the rising people’s movements and their representation in the parliamentary arena. This is accentuated more by the vacillation and duplicity in their position when in power, where unprecedented shift is being made in following the model of economic development that is dependent on foreign and big capital instead of internal resources and people’s strength. This posture has contributed to eroding the confidence and trust of people and may further contribute to the decline of the parliamentary left. Nevertheless, it should also be recognised that the parliamentary left has played a significant role in slowing the privatisation programme, blocking economic reform in a number of sectors where the trade union movement unitedly gave resistance like in the case of United Forum of Bank Employees, preventing changes in labour laws, not allowing full convertibility of currency, and above all foregrounding the imperialist dimension in our foreign policy by breaking the alliance with UPA, which in turn forced the Congress to debate with its own Nehruvian legacy in foreign policy.

The NUTI will be guided in its actions by the immediate political agenda of securing secularism and democracy as its core objective; and working for a new CMP in the process of government formation.

NTUI had earlier pointed out that the weakness in the people’s movements is in their being sporadic, isolated, and not being able to converge within a common framework of action. If the people’s movements have to play a larger part in influencing and shaping government formation that may emerge after the next general elections it is necessary that this weakness is overcome. The fragmented grass-root mass struggles need to develop a Common People’s Program and sustain a militant mass struggle based on which they can impact, influence and force a new CMP in the parliamentary arena.

The military type attack on Mumbai on 26 November 2008 shook Mumbai, India and the world. NTUI condemns terrorism in all its manifestations and shares the outrage of the people in the death of innocent citizens who are not accountable for the acts of the State. The NTUI welcomes the spirit of people in opposing terrorism without being drawn into sectarianism, national chauvinism and war mongering. The Mumbai incident brings out the implication of being engulfed in US sponsored “international war against terrorism”, and the need for stopping the influence of U.S.-Israel States in the sub-continent. The working people of India and Pakistan should join hands in struggle against Hindu chauvinism, and Islamic extremism in Pakistan, to build unity of people in South Asian people and reject terrorism which weakens this bond, and our struggle against imperialism. NTUI unites with trade organizations and working people of India and Pakistan in creating a secular and democratic society in Pakistan and defending it in India. NTUI opposes war between India and Pakistan calls for peace in South Asia.

NTUI is oriented to shaping the trade union movement’s role in carving out, locating in, and consolidating the space in the Indian democratic process for politics of anti-imperialism, democratic development, and social justice.

The broad framework around which this people’s program can be shaped is around the key concepts of national development, decentralization and federalism, planned economy based on domestic demand with
expanding public sector, secularism, social equality, improving purchasing power of the working people, deepening democracy, worker participation, and peace in South Asia and the world.

NTUI believes that trade unions share a common interest and understanding with other social movements that arise in struggle for democracy, and against oppression, deprivation and exploitation. An objective basis for building a strategic alliance between trade unions and other social movements exists.

Crisis produces the condition for unions to force a labour identity, which is one among other relevant identities, as a principal standard to assess the class content of various forms of social struggle, and beyond it to contribute to a process for a new alliance. It is important that the working people learn their interests, and thus gain their identity as a labouring people in the course of these interactions. It is therefore necessary to shape our demands and rights which encompass these multiple identities within our broad program of action. The identities within the working class and the ideologies that constitute such identities, produce different languages and actions and ambiguities between them. This requires a process of interaction that allows discussion, and enables emergence of a language of the underlying reality of labour in process. This also requires creating an overall environment in favour of trade union movement and giving respectability to the working class in its role as a creator of wealth, and thereby the progress of the society.

NTUI is for developing the Assembly of Working People as an autonomous process of building social alliance with other organisations. It will be an Assembly of peoples’ representatives that come into a regular process of interaction, articulation and defining the needs of the different sections of working people. It is also a mechanism for enabling the local level self-organising initiatives to relate to, and integrate into, a national framework, which is shaped and defined by them individually in an interactive process. The Assembly will enable articulation of needs, making of policy demands, and developing a framework of negotiation with government. It is a step in the direction for a large-scale political mobilisation and nationwide resistance.

In the present context, the prime task is to open up an ideological offensive against monetarism and market fundamentalism. As the government moves into the Keynesian framework, under the impact of economic crisis, the persistence of neo-liberal ideology will restrict it to just the fiscal stimulus for consumption and socialization of the losses and restrain every effort to reorganize the economy. It is therefore, incumbent on the NTUI to not just critique the old economic framework, but to contend within the emerging Keynesian framework for moving towards a more radical reorganization of economy and society. This means to go beyond fiscal stimulus and struggle for:

  • Public sector investment and expansion of state ownership;
  • Revamping of the cooperative sector by providing fiscal support, building up PSU-Cooperative partnership and democratisation of cooperatives;
  • Expansion of the wage share by reversing the trend in the decline of wage share in the value addition;
  • Democratic accountability of public sector and public services;
  • Participatory democracy in local bodies and institutional strengthening of these local bodies.

In the face of this economic crisis NTUI calls for unity of the trade union movement to build a common programme of action and united struggle to face this challenge.

New Delhi, 16 December 2008

Resolution No. 1 was last edited by ntui, on Saturday, the 12 of December, 2009.