APPREHENSIONS BEHIND A BOGEY OF "INDUSTRIAL UNREST"
“Bangalore Troubled By Industrial Unrest” (Business Standard, 25th March 2014), “Companies trip up on skills to tackle labour unrest” (Ishan Srivastava, TNN | Mar 26, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)----- such headings have recently appeared in a number of established papers. The anxiety and alarm of the capitalists have been revealed through these media owned and controlled by them.
But what is the cause for so much concern? The above-mentioned report gives us a glimpse of it on those days in March-end------ “Toyota’s is not an isolated case of labour unrest in the region. Bangalore’s manufacturing sector has in the past few years witnessed one of its worst phases, thanks to labour unrest in the region’s industrial hub??. At present, three of the five large companies facing labour unrest have declared lockouts at their respective factories in and around Bangalore, rendering thousands of people jobless, albeit temporarily.” (Ibid) Three factories have been put under lock-out by their respective managements in response to workers stirring up demanding higher wages----Toyota Kirloskar Motors, Bombay Rayon Fashions, and Stumpp Schuele & Somappa. In two others in those industrial areas surrounding Bangalore---Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages’ factory and at agriculture machinery maker Fowler Westrup’s unit workers have launched strikes. These capitalist versus workers conflicts in five factories around Bangalore has become the cause for consternation of the capitalists and their media. Just five units involved in workers struggle have compelled them to cry out that the whole city and industrial areas of Bangalore has become “Troubled By Unrest”. Haunted by the fear of industrial unrests they have raised an alarm.
Presumably they are not only perturbed because of the present. They seem to have not forgotten the workers struggles in Bosch and Parle last year as is evident from their comments--- “Toyota’s is not an isolated case?Bangalore’s manufacturing sector has in the past few years witnessed one of its worst phases??”. The Karnataka Employers’ Association (KEA) President B C Prabhakar said: “The above instances clearly bring out that even the workmen who are paid reasonably high wages are resorting to agitation and violence to press exorbitant demands. They don’t realise such demands could be beyond the paying capacity of units, which might become unviable, putting at risk their own jobs. Overall, the current labour scenario in Bangalore has made investors rethink their Karnataka investment plans.” (Ibid)
So they, the capitalists and their hanger-ons--- the state, the media, etc are scared not just because of only a couple or the recent four or five outbursts of the workers in their factories, workers who have started upsetting their apple-cart. They see in this an “industrial unrest”, “one of its worst phases” in a premier city of this country because they are seeing much more beneath it! Even though many among us talking and claiming to fight for the cause of the oppressed and exploited may not have the time to notice something more than factory level union struggles in these yet “insignificantly small” happenings but the capitalists are apprehending much more.
The Toyota workers through their independent union have once again come up in the news through their struggle that started with their demand for hike in wages. In the thick and thin of their struggle they are not showing signs of budging in front of the attacks of lock-out, suspensions, police assaults, and pressures to sign the good-conduct bond as a condition for reinstatement. They are not bowing before this as easily as the state, the labour department and the management thought. They have grown through such situations bearing all this from their earlier 2006 struggle. After the pictures of the Honda workers being brutally beaten by the huge police force in Gurgaon in the North on July 2005, spread widely through the TV channels, and workers struggles reverberated in the South of this big country among the Toyota workers of this city of Bangalore the Japanese company bosses put pressure on the government to suppress highlighting such news in future. But the eruption of workers revolts, the emergence of such struggles, have continued, even though still sporadically, spreading over different regions in Gurgaon, Pune, Bangalore, parts of Tamil Nadu or elsewhere. One writer in an article of a workers organization has even compared this scenario to be resembling that of the Honda workers struggle in Foshan China in 2010 which multiplied into a series of struggles in different surrounding factories. Here also in spite of repeated assaults the Maruti workers struggle have not stopped. The Suzuki Power-train and Suzuki Motorcycle workers involved from that same time haven’t also put their hands down. The recent win of the co-fighters of the Maruti’s retrenched workers working within the Maruti Manesar factory in the union elections showed that the struggle is continuing against all odds. Then the emerging succession of recent struggles in different factories of the Gurgaon and its adjoining regions----in Bajaj, Daikin,Auto-Fit, Munjal Kiriu, Noppino, Minda ??the stream of such workers struggles are not only not showing signs of dying out but in spite of all efforts of the capitalists and the state to repress and instill fear of reprisals through each and every instance of suppression of workers struggle are continuing unabated. Of course the struggles are continuing in the midst of an uphill tortuous journey. But they are not getting crushed and stamped out in most cases as it is being revealed. In many such struggles, as in Maruti. Toyota, or Hyundai as it is becoming long-drawn, temporary lull seems to set in for some period only to raise its head of revolt once again with some renewed vigour in another opportunity. On the other there are also increasing signs of similar struggles spreading and rising in others. In short, several of these struggles are showing signs that they have come to stay and cannot be rubbished of easily.
Albeit these are still not anywhere near an “industrial unrest” gripping the industrial hubs or cities as the capitalists are raising a hue and cry about. But containing within these are the germs of real anxiety and concern for them. The capitalists openly admit now---“The intensity of industrial unrest in India has increased during the years 2008-2011” or “in the recent years India is facing an alarming situation with the increase in number of unrest” (Industrial Unrest Past Trend and Lessons For Future---- All India Organisation of Employers). They are also compelled to recognize that in this new period of globalization the workers struggles are more and more involved with the fights for their right to form their own unions, against contractualisation of jobs and attacks on their service conditions rather than struggles for mere wage settlements and economic benefits that existed earlier.
At such an initial phase it may still most likely be only an alibi for the capitalists to raise the bogey of unrest in order to repress and disperse such struggles by force. But if it could become the other way round! If not only fighting isolatedly in three or four factories of an industrial region the struggling workers at the grass-roots connected with each other for solidarity of one another’s struggles. If not only stretching their helping hand from a distant industrial region just to financially support the struggling, valiant, workers like that of Maruti in another distant industrial region the workers started raising the voice of solidarity and support for such struggles from different corners of the country through workers agitations and mobilizations. Then that would be the start of their journey towards one of those “finest phases” of the real rise of the working class with its ability to display more and more the real challenging power they possess. An important step forward towards a situation where the working class will be able to give a befitting reply to the concerted attacks of the employer-capitalist class. With numerous small platoons of fighting workers starting to regroup in different industrial areas of the country cutting across factories where they have started stirring up and at the same time inter-connecting regularly with the struggles in other industrial areas of the country far and near for a still bigger unity, that would be the only very positive steps towards building up the really “worst phases” for these capitalists about which they are raising alarm now. Such efforts, by the leading workers of the present struggles, to come together, will be able to enthuse and arouse the lakhs of other workers still waiting and watching, to really move forward and join to make up a tumultuous wave of unrest with the gathering together of the united army of the working class of this country under a committed, fighting banner and direction established and led by their own leading fighters. As the capitalists are launching their merciless assaults they are fearing the rise of such bold, unwavering march of the workers of different industrial areas united to advance in that direction. That is why at every opportunity they raise the bogey about it when that voice of revolt is still weak and shaky to confuse and dissuade the workers from taking that path and justify their continuing repression. Their fear of “workers unrest” must be turned into reality and that only these new workers fighting doggedly can start preparing for in this way at this very moment.
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