Rise Against Price Rise!
Rise Against Price Rise!
Resist Imperialist Globalisation!
Workers United Will Never be Defeated!
This 7 September 2010 has brought together all the national trade union centres for the first time in the history of India against price rise and deregulation of labour. NTUI was created with unity at its centre and hence has joined all joint trade union actions including the token general strikes irrespective of whether we agreed on principle that the steps taken were correct, sufficient or with adequate preparation. This General Strike call reaches out to the largest number of workers in the country, most of them employed in different precarious employments with the minimum wage legislation as their only weapon for bargain. NTUI, with the largest membership of contract workers, and representing large sections of other informal workers, hence calls upon all sections of the working class to join this General Strike and ensure it succeeds in all sectors and regions!
Food Inflation Result of Government Policy – No Speculative Hoarding!
The rapid food price inflation over the past two years was clear indication of the Government’s helplessness, often expressed by government sources candidly enough, in combating the price rise. The cases of rising prices of rice and sugar reveal that neither “cost push” nor drought really accounts for the food price inflation. The larger causes are the “dysfunction in distribution”, which plainly speaking, stands for speculative hoarding all along the supply chain from farm to the consumer, and a government policy that has presided over declining investment in agriculture and thus leaving food production to the vicissitudes of nature. The government policy of exporting surplus agricultural produce without saving, profits no one but traders linked to the global supply chain.
Global Economic Crisis – More Subsidies to Capital
The response to the global economic crisis across the world, including India as well as other developing economies, has been largely in the form of fiscal stimulus packages and bailout packages aimed at assisting the private sector to cover their ‘losses’ on one hand and austerity measures to contain public spending on the other. The first measure amounted to an injection of money into the economy, supposedly to stimulate growth, that invariably resulted in spiralling prices and the second, amongst other effects resulted in large scale reduction in social spending including spending on Public Sector, job cuts and pay cuts. Thus workers across the world today are faced with ever soaring prices along with continuing erosion of their wages, both nominal and real. This response has also prompted an increased demand of capital for deregulation of the labour market through reform of labour legislations. The Government of India announced three stimulus packages since December 2008 to infuse confidence among investors in the economy. None of the three packages made any attempt to regulate capital or provide any measure to create new employment opportunities or to create any social protection for those workers who lost their employment due to the vagaries of finance capital.
Basic Labour Rights under Attack
The rampant informalisation even in government services and other public services has reduced the gains made through trade unions over decades to the mere protection of employment and minimum wages. It has also compromised the quality of essential and critical services. Contractualisation and non-payment of minimum wages is being justified under the pretext of crisis. Government estimates show that the ratio of contract workers to permanent workers have magnified manifold especially in the sectors that were beneficiaries of the stimulus packages, for example, in garments and textiles and auto and auto components. Innovative avenues of increasing irregular workers are also being employed – hiring of apprentices and trainees to perform tasks of permanent workers at much lower wages. Flagrant violation of the Contract Labour Act has become the norm with contract workers being hired rampantly in perennial jobs. The right to association and collective bargaining of all workers are under severe attack. The employers in close collusion with the governments and the judiciary have come down heavily on any protest by workers against these violations. We demand an immediate reform of the Contract Labour Act, which will ensure a progressive elimination of contract work through collective bargaining of trade unions with principal employers.
The minimum wage rates across all states are far from being anywhere near the wage rate that the 15th ILC set which was later revised further through successive Supreme Court directives. The prevailing rates are less than the subsistence wage and far from being a living wage and yet it is the most violated legislation. Violation of the minimum wages act should be treated as a criminal offence as it amounts to forced labour. Given the laxity of the labour department and more often than not their collusion with employers, the right to inspect and prosecute cases of violation should be extended to registered trade unions. Further, the 5 yearly revision of the minimum wages by the Advisory Board should be made mandatory. In case the Board fails to revise, then the VDA of 5 years should be clubbed with the basic along with a flat 15% increment. The government has even failed to ensure their promised real NREGA wage of Rs. 100 in the light of the rising prices that have continually eroded the purchasing power of the working poor.
Regenerate the Public Sector
The public sector was created to make efficient use of public resources in order to shape the direction of the economy as well as meet the needs and the aspirations of the working class. This notion and hence the entire sector is today again under tremendous attack with renewed attempts at disinvestment with increasing rationalisation. The use of the funds being raised from divestment of the public sector is also not specified and neither is it done through transparent procedure. Regenerating the public sector is essential and hence the government should instead further invest in the Public Sector. The government must desist from disinvestment of the public sector and instead reinvest in it to both reform and regenerate the public sector so as to direct private investment in order to ensure economic equalities, social justice and environmental sustainability is maintained.
As the attack of Capital against the working class intensifies, our only response can be to build united and democratic Union Power that can strike, at the core of capital, militantly. Let us unite this 7th of September to win a: