Workers' Fights in Distant UAE and Nearby Gujarat
Just before some months all of us have noticed the news of Indian workers? revolt in the United Arab Emirates. ?Nearly 3,000 Indian workers have been detained at an undisclosed location on the outskirts of the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, on charges of rioting. The workers ? from Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Kerala ? of a large ceramics manufacturing unit in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah were rounded up by security agencies after they went on a rampage at their labour camp on Friday (July 4, ?08) night to protest against the poor quality of food being served to them.? The army was called into action. In this incident also the mood of the workers can be gauzed from the TOI report, ?UAE arrests 3,000 Indian workers for rioting? (8 Jul 2008, 0035 hrs IST, Daniel P George, TNN) ?According to Rateesh, an eyewitness, the workers beat up the camp-in-charge, smashed windows and destroyed canteen furniture. Not content, they then came out and set at least two parked vehicles on fire. A few of them were even injured in the melee. During his visit to the UAE in May this year, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had urged the Gulf countries to promote social equality for the millions of Indian workers in the region.?[ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3208446.cms] While the middle east press kept silence on this matter, those who want to condemn the workers reported that there was a liquor shop near that labour camp and some intoxicated workers started the brawl. But they should keep in mind why the foreign minister, who can never be blamed for becoming a human right activist, urged the gulf countries so ? as the TOI reported, and why Daniel P George of Times News Network wrote about this, as it was printed, in the same breath. Moreover, ?poor quality of food? might have served just as a spark to already inflammable material, or in other words, it was the ?occasion? and not the reason behind the explosion of pent up dissention and wrath. In recent times many of the western world focused on this issue of working condition of South Asian workers in the Middle East. As for example, an interesting piece can be found in the Yale Global site which bore a title ? Hidden behind the Gulf State?s development are Indian "foot soldiers of globalization?, an article by Steve Raymer. [(http://yaleglobal. yale.edu/display.article?id=5992 an article by Steve Raymer posted on July 12, 2005)] In January ?08 issue of the print version of this magazine we commented on the Struggling Indian Workers in UAE. Just before eight months Indian workers revolted there. That time we wrote, ? ? literally thousands and thousands of construction workers took part in a 2-day strike on 27th and 28th October and assembled at a protest meeting or something resembling that. Their action was ?illegal? as per laws of the United Arab Emirates. The very name of the country, above all the word ?Emirates? suggests that the idea of ?democracy? is scarce there as it is in other desert-covered oil-rich Arab countries ruled by Kings and Emirs. Hence, workers? basic rights and actions like organising and fighting Trade Union struggles, strikes, etc are unimaginable and unpardonable there. But the workers too were in a defiant mood that time being hard-pressed by, for example, gruelling workload at a temperature as high as 45?C [113?F!] under the sun, and ever-decreasing wage + benefit, as for example, staying in shared shanty shelters lacking in many amenities and getting just Rs 6500 a month in all [roughly Rs 250 per day assuming one rest day per week] ?. The mood of the workers can be guessed from the fact that many workers were spotted by police as ?rioters? who threw stones at police, smashed police-cars, etc; it is indeed a noteworthy matter as immigrants, ?poor foreigners?, generally don?t dare make such scenes in an unknown land so far away from their native country, especially a country under despotic rule and oppressive environment. ??
Well, let us come back to July 2008 again. Just 2 days after the incident of workers? revolt in the UAE in July, in Modi?s Ramrajya Gujarat a diamond worker was killed in firing and six were injured when thousands and thousands of diamond workers were protesting vigorously in the Kumudwadi area of Bhavnagar, a town known to the world for its skill in working with smaller and tiny diamonds. Workers of Bhavnagar were not exception. Barring the Surat workers who were already granted a wage rise of 20% very recently after some days of strike, diamond workers all over the state were agitating on the same rise, a thing for which they, including the Surat workers, have been fighting. An internet source (http://libcom.org/news/one-worker-killed-security-guards-attack-indian-diamond-workers-strike-09072008) described the beginning of the struggle of diamond workers concisely on their site on 9th July: ?Sources in the Surat Diamond Association said that the owner of the Sutaria Diamond factory, situated at Kohinoor Society in Varachha, had dismissed 160 workers after they demanded 20 per cent hike in their wages. In Navsari, tension prevailed during the day, over the issue of a 20 per cent hike in the wages of diamond workers. Over 500 workers of Godhani Diamonds came out of the factory and raised slogans against its owner Shantilal Godani, in the Jalalpore area.
?Thousands of workers at units in Gujarat cut and polish the raw materials until they are priceless jewels which are then exported to the US at huge profits. But workers say they are paid very little and the pay structure is inconsistent. Some get paid Rs 25 per diamond while others get just Rs 15 and wages have not been revised in years, despite the inflation. The agitation by the diamond cutting workers have spread to Rajkot, Junagadh, Palanpur and other areas in the State. In a bid to break the impasse, the Surat Diamond Industries Association announced its decision to implement a 20 per cent hike in the wages with immediate effect.? Why did the diamond workers begin their struggle? Labouring inhumanly with a meagre wage of Rs 3000 or so those workers helped Gujarat to take number one position in world diamond business. But the capitalists, with their constant excuse of recession of US economy, pressed the workers as much as possible. This is making the diamond workers irate.
And again, workers struggle in diamond industry is not something unprecedented in Gujarat. As for example, 10 years ago the Indian Express (on 21/01/98) had a news item titled ?Losing Sheen? ? ?There has never been a new year like this in Surat. Hundreds of workers who came to resume work at the city's diamond polishing centres on January 1 were welcomed by a notice board which announced wage cuts. They had seen similar announcements ? at least twice in the past three years ? but the 30-40 per cent cut was more than they could take: they took to the streets, raised slogans, and the protests turned violent. Surat, which was slowly erasing memories of the plague, slipped again into a gloom.
Diamond workers of Surat have never been organised but the huge pay cut by a dozen-odd big industries and several small ones made them unite and revolt. The protests started when a big industrial unit removed 700 workers after they refused to accept reduced wages. Discontented workers from other units joined them.
The recent violence in Varachha and Kapodra areas was in fact the eruption of the discontent that has been simmering for long. With recession in the diamond industry, several workers were laid off and the skilled ones had to take up jobs on a salary far below what they once used to get. [Here and later emphasis ours]
To add to the problems, no diamond unit, irrespective of its size, follows labour laws. Leave aside regularising employees, many of the small units are not even registered. Employers argue that labour laws have no scope in their trade as it depends heavily on international demand. The labour department has done precious little to make the units follow laws. ?? When Benzene poisoning led to hospitalisation of several workers in June 2005, eyes were turned to unhealthy labour conditions present within diamond factories, and then ?The furore over the benzene poisoning of four diamond cutters in India?s diamond city Surat, has led to the unearthing of the startling fact that only 431 of over 10,000 diamond units in the state of Gujarat have been registered under the Factories Act that specifies the working conditions of factory workers among other things.? (http://www.diamonds.net/news/ NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=12578; Title: India's Diamond Factories Unregulated) [emphasis ours]
If we re-read some sentences above: ?Diamond workers of Surat have never been organised but the huge pay cut by a dozen-odd big industries and several small ones made them unite and revolt. The protests started when a big industrial unit removed 700 workers after they refused to accept reduced wages. Discontented workers from other units joined them.? ? we shall see that by this process of uniting and fighting together the diamond workers will be able to recognise the class character of the Surat Diamond Workers Association headed by Babubhai Jirawala, who told the press that: the only way the diamond-polishing industry can be sustained is by striking a balance between the interests of the owners and that of the workers. [see http://www.indianexpress.com/story/334756.html for the article Losing Sheen of Indian Express] Whereas the workers booed: Workers, however, refuse to buy merchants' theory of recession. ?How come they spend crores on marriages, drive fancy cars, employ managers drawing Rs 15,000 a month or open new units?? they say. [ibid]
Working condition, wages, and the overall situation have not improved during Modi?s reign. As the Indian Express story writes: ?Nine-months-pregnant Neelam Zapalia, 20, of Hadanagar, is struggling to hold on to life. On July 6, her husband, 21-year-old Vijay, a worker at the Jewel Star diamond-polishing unit in Bhavnagar, was shot dead by a security guard during a workers? agitation. ?I have to go back to the factory and begin polishing diamonds again,? she says. ? ? Together, the Zapalia couple earned about Rs 5,000-6,000 per month, drawing a daily wage of Rs 75-100 each. The family could never earn enough to build a house or even send the children to school. Vijay had to abandon his studies after class VI to join his father at work, and now, after he is no more, Neelam is not sure if their firstborn will ever sit in a classroom.?. So this is the condition of nearly seven hundred thousand diamond workers. Perhaps one thing helped the diamond workers ? they are not outsiders, not migrant workers, unlike gold-smiths or say construction workers who are overwhelmingly from the eastern states; the diamond sector workers generally hail from different districts of Saurashtra.
Frightful stories on working condition of young workers in world?s most notorious ship breaking yard ?Alang-Sosia? in the Bhavnagar district can be heard from hundreds of thousand hard pressed workers there, whose toil has made this yard an almost quarter-a-billion $ per annum business, but whose safety concerns are nobody?s headache and who are severely underpaid. Condition of thousands and thousand of ?contract workers? are no better. Silicosis death and handicap wait like fate for thousands of Agate workers.
Don?t we see some similarity between Sheikh?s UAE and Modi?s Gujarat? Both have given the bourgeois, foreign or native, to pile up enough fortune that may incur from globalization. The capitalists are given an conducive atmosphere for capital to be invested by ironing all creases that may appear due to ?labour trouble? or governmental control or supervision of workers? rights, condition of work, pay structure, ? etc by ?strong? hands. In one place the Islamic Code is said to be supreme and in the other the Hindu-fascism, which has the ?power? to organise lumpen forces and let them hunt for blood in the name of Hindutva and to brand any opposition as anti-Hindu hence anti-national, and ?Muslim Terrorist? ? etc; to mastermind fake encounters ?. Democracy is out of question in both places for the people of the lower tier of society. This is precisely the nature of rule the capitalists get in the proposed SEZ, and the whole state of Gujarat, all the Emirates of Arab have virtually become SEZ-s.
But if this is the gloomy side of the story, the other aspect is now being written by the workers with their sweat-and-blood irrespective of the repressive regimes. Both in 1998 and 2008 we saw how the agitated Gujarat Diamond workers got united, how an initial group of workers from a bigger unit started the event and how other workers from other units joined ? the all round attack of the capitalists on hundreds of thousand workers in a close vicinity and a natural outcome of the capitalist labour process helped them to unite and fight. Revolts of migrant South Asian workers in close succession in a repressive and chocking atmosphere in UAE also portrays the workers tendency to fight tyranny even in an unfavourable situation. In both cases, in places with no recent history or tradition of workers? struggle, workers? fight emerged spontaneously. For developing unity and struggle at least in the Trade Union level, the workers can help themselves, they do not need the help or guidance of established TU leaders or TU ?experts?. But of course these two events and their encouraging messages need to be propagated to workers elsewhere. Sustaining the fighting organisation i.e. the workers? own union, keeping that union under their control, etc are also important questions to be taken to the workers. The political context of present day is another subject that the working class activists need to propagate and that is: all established parties are united at least in one basis ? they all support globalisation, and hence all their governments, trade unions, leaders, work hand in hand with the state machinery in keeping the workers enslaved and thus to keep the capitalists sail safely and smoothly. Workers are partly learning these bitter lessons by summing up their life experiences with established parties, unions and leaders. Class conscious activists should also help them in this regard.
Another point. The readers? reactions to the news of rebelling Indian workers in UAE as expressed in the Times of India website seemed somewhat interesting. Readers in general of ?English? newspapers and more so who can comment in English and send that by email are generally thought to be a sample of the so called urban upwardly mobile petit bourgeois, most of whom are different ?professionals?. But out of first 10 comments 5 were not that much critical to the workers as naturally expected from urban educated ?middle class?, and a few, in one way or other, justified the ?reaction? of the workers there even if not supporting the ?violent? incident. Do these readers indicate the birth of somewhat ?new? type of workers? Or, is there a change of perception developing among these readers? Or else, does the so called ?nex-gen? English speaking-writing people include some different types? Or, lastly, it will not be prudent to generalise anything at all from these few comments as on date. One reader commented: ?Labours exported to the Arab countries should note that, they will not get fair treatment outside the country. Because in our India also same thing happens. This world is divided into two categories, haves and have-nots. As per my observation haves are not treating have-nots properly. Have-nots are slaves and continue to be slaves, unless they fight for their right. Hence reaction of Indian labour abroad is quite natural. But the mean adopted by them is not correct. It can be demonstrated by peaceful way.? And another reader started his comment with, ?This is just the beginning for an era of uprising ?? and finished with, ?but in my point of opinion, the uprising that took place was the right thing to do, at least these people had the courage to do so, that may be one day will benefit the thousands of Indians serving in the U.A.E?.
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