It is Time to Fight Back! Be the Resistance! Speak Up!
The struggle to limit working day is as old as the factory system. For nearly two centuries workers have been demanding an eight hour workday. A hundred and thirty years after the heroes of the struggle for an eight hour workday gave up their lives at Chicago’s Haymarket Square the length of the working day remains a core issue for workers in this country, across the global south and now increasingly for a section of workers even in advanced countries.
Resist the Attack on the Workers’ Rights
The BJP government is determinedly intensifying this attack on basic rights of workers. In the year gone by, the BJP government managed to slip the Factories (Amendment) Bill 2016 through the Lok Sabha violating accepted norms of notice to the opposition. This amendment, if approved by the Rajya Sabha, will increase permissible overtime to as much as four hours a day, allow for child labour in factories, bring women on to night shift without adequate safeguards and of course leave the definition of factory, in terms of the workers employed, entirely to legislation by the states. In the same monsoon session of parliament the BJP government managed to bring in an amendment to the Child Labour (Protection and Prohibition) Act 1986 to allow children (under 14 years) to work in ‘family enterprises’ and in the ‘audio-visual entertainment industry’ as also effectively allowing them to work in brick kilns, agriculture etc.This legislation turns its back to decades of struggle against child labour, for a literate society but also drags down wages.
Along with this the BJP government is determined to reduce standards for trade union rights as it presses on with its Industrial Relations Code. The most recent attempt for a unified Social Security Code will undermine tripartism, reduce coverage and pass on to social security funds to the vagaries of the private sector.
3 years after coming to government, the BJP has even failed to increase the minimum wage by not raising the national floor-level minimum wage since 2015 which remains stuck at Rs. 160 per day. It has not even begun the process – despite all the Prime Minister’s statements on cooperative federalism – of seeking a consensus with state governments on reform of the minimum wage mechanism. By turning its back on ‘honorarium workers’ and by reducing the MGNREGS wage in real terms, the BJP government has actively worked towards pushing wages downwards.
The impact of demonetisation has only worsened the situation for working people by spiralling a transfer of resources away from all forms of temporary and migrant workers, landless and marginal farmers and the marginal self-employed.
All this marks a formidable intensification of the attack against the working class.
Fewer Jobs – More Intolerance
The BJP government’s onslaught on workers’ rights and wages together with its inability to revive the economy forms a forbidding situation. At the 2014 General Election, the BJP promised to create 5 crore new jobs. Today job creation is lower than it was by the UPA government. In the past three years fewer jobs have been created than in any year since 2011. The BJP governments own data indicates that in the last three years a total of no more than 7.5 lakh jobs have been created.
It is this attack on livelihoods and lack of jobs that is resulting in the increasing demand for reservation, in education and employment, from what have been relatively advantaged sections of rural society. This has been at the root of rising social tensions across the country marked by the increasing attacks on dalits and adivasis, members of religious minorities and women. While the BJP has been recklessly seeking to gain electoral advantage out of this, what it is in fact doing is pitting one community against another.
The BJP and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh recognise that they must sustain these social tensions to retain their electoral advantage. From the time they have come to government starting with Maharashtra and now across the country they have raised the spectre of the attack on the cow as the unifier of Hindtva, the BJP–RSS brand of Hindu majoritarianism. This is aimed at isolating and targeting those of the Islamic faith. Vigilantes and militias have emerged that have turned on, and even killed, those engaged in the trade of the buffalo and the bull. There is no evidence of anyone desecrating a cow. Yet no one from the BJP’s government or national leadership has spoken up to say that these actions are unacceptable in a democracy. From Dadri, to Una and now Alwar there is a sustained attack on the right to life and right to livelihoods of dalits and muslims.
It is this voltage, against those of the Islamic faith that the BJP must keep up to retain its electoral success. It for this gain that the BJP government warmongers with Pakistan. It is for this gain that the Prime Minister himself reaches out to industrialists and declares that he will go and build an alliance with Israel and compromises with imperialist forces. It is for this gain the BJP government has turned state forces against the peoples of the Kashmir valley blinding and maiming a generation and killing hundreds of innocent civilians and incarcerating thousands. It is for this gain that the BJP government turns against scholars and students at our universities.
The BJP has indeed gained electoral momentum based on the plurality of votes. It believes this must allow it an unquestioned peoples’ mandate. It is this ‘mandate’ that for the BJP that gives it the right to bend any rule or violate any norm.
All for Whose Gain?
The BJP pushed through legislation employing a finance bill, without the consent of the Rajya Sabha, for removing the ceiling of corporate funding of election and making it more opaque. This is a clear signal that the BJP runs its government not for the people who vote for it but those who finance it. This violated a simple rule of our constitution that for all matters, apart from the powers of government to tax and spend, it must obtain the consent of both houses of parliament. Similarly it is determined to press ahead with the Goods and Services Tax, overriding the views of state governments not in the BJP’s fold, creating a so-called single Indian market. The beneficiaries of this ‘single market’ will be large corporates and multinationals alone.
These are important steps for the BJP to ensure the continuity of profits for corporates as the economy is at a standstill. Industrial production is simply not growing. And the agriculture sector and the rest of the rural economy remain in crisis. Private investment is at an all time low.
2-7 May – Week of Resistance for Democratic Rights
While we have no doubt made gains, the working class continues to face its most unprecedented attack. While on one hand we have won permanent jobs for 2,700 contract workers in the Bombay Municipal Council, the conviction of the 13 Maruti-Suzuki comrades for murder shows the virulent face of the attack.
We know that the attack on workers’ rights and on democratic rights is today rising not just in our country but across the world. We reaffirm our commitment to build a united struggle with all militant trade unions and sections of the working class both at home and abroad.
While we intensify our struggle to resist the attack of the BJP, while we resist the onslaught of capital, we will fight for a just minimum wage, we will fight for universal social security, we will fight to defend trade union rights just as we must build our movement to defend all democratic rights too.
This May Day, as we pay tribute to those who sacrificed so much to advance the struggle, we at the NTUI go forward marking 2 – 7 May 2017 as a week of resistance countrywide. Where ever we are, in every factory and in every field, we will build this resistance to defend democratic rights as every workers’ rights.
- Equal Pay for Equal Work
- End the Contract Labour System
- A Just Minimum Wage for All
- Safe and Secure Work for All
- 100 Days of Work for Every Adult under MNREGS
- Mandatory Recognition of Trade Unions through the Secret Ballot