Third General Council, 7-8 January 2012, Kolkata

NTUI represents 15 lakh workers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and over 1 lakh in West Bengal. It is the outcome of the increasing trend of workers to organise across party lines, autonomous of single party dominated trade union centres. It represents a multi-polarity of political views with a unity of purpose.

The “new” in NTUI is also representative of having in its fold workers forest gatherers, sex workers, waste pickers and other such workers who are not recognised as workers. NTUI believes the future of the trade union movement lies not just in increasing the collective bargaining power of already unionised workers but also organising sections that are both unrecognized as workers but also not yet organized into unions. It represents a militant and democratic trend in trade unionism, bringing together workers from the highest technology industries of electronics, automobiles and petrochemicals to enormous number of informal sector workers in construction, transport, the anganwadis and rural workers including landless agricultural workers and plantation workers.

The 3rd General Council is especially pertinent at this point of time because the increasing linking of our economy with the global economy has significantly eroded governments’ capacity to reign in inflation specially that of wage goods. Spiraling prices have contributed further to the impoverishment of the working class, in particular, those from the most marginalized rural communities. This has expanded employers’ capacity to continually increase the number of irregular and unprotected workers in relation to the number of regular workers.

Kolkata, with its recent change in the political landscape has created the necessity to re-organise to re-enregise the left. There couldn’t have been a more appropriate place for the NTUI General Council at this time.

Over 10,000 workers from all over of West Bengal will march on 6th January 2012 from College Square to Metro (Esplanade East) to greet the 700 delegates of the New Trade Union Initiative’s Third General Council. The march will culminate in a public meeting that will be opened by the poet and writer ,Tarun Sanyal, Chairman of the West Bengal Reception Committee, followed by NTUI President D. Thankappan, General Secretary Ashim Roy, the leadership of the NTUI West Bengal State Council and Ex-MLA Santosh Rana.

For more details, Contact: Anuradha Talwar 094433002064