The Calcutta Electric Supply Co.'s Contract Workers' Fight & Formation of New Organisation
Eight thousand CESC contract workers observed a 14 days' strike in March '06, which flared up at the death of their fellow worker Chandreswar Das in a cable blast. The CPIM led TU tried in vain to dissuade the workers at the beginning, but after 2 weeks, the workers, indignantly but in somewhat organised manner went back to work. However, they did not go back to the fold of the old unions run by the CITU, AITUC, INTUC and Hind Mazdoor Panchayat. In the prevailing condition of capitalist-old TU-govt nexus working hand in hand to tame the workers by hook or by crook and helping the managements to go ahead with anti-labour game plan, the CESC contract workers adeptly took the line of creating their own fighting organisation clandestinely during its preparatory phase . At an advanced stage of their preparation, recently, they published their handout and we got a Hindi version of that. Their whole move of forming a fighting union of their own remained all along secret. They did not contact any Communist Revolutionary organisation or trade unions run by them, neither they contacted any so-called 'TU-expert'. They prepared on their own, formed the union of their own, and even wrote the handbill themselves.
Before going further, it will be worthwhile to reckon some aspects of difficulties the workers faced in creating their own organisation in a corporate house like CESC and the nature of job of those workers. Perhaps CESC is the oldest power corporate in India and until early 1970s it was incorporated in London . Now the house of the RPG (Goenka) controls it, and this house was one of the earliest 'close friends' of the Left Front Govt when this govt had not many friendly big capitalists as it has now. In the stock exchange too, not long ago, this corporate was pioneer in noticeably high stock prices. Naturally, in such a Co the workers face extra-tough TU-management-govt nexus. The nature of jobs also makes things hard for the workers. These workers have formally 22 different contractors as their direct employers. Then, some of them work in High-Tension lines like three hundred thousand volts lines, and some other in Low-Tension lines like normal household connections. Normally these two sections have no inter-communication in their work process. Each such contract company, out of the total 22, separately work in different 'Gears' at different places ranging in several districts surrounding Calcutta, some of which has as low as 10 workers, while some has as many as 250-300 workers. Hence, we can gauge the difficulty workers face while organising themselves working in such a scattered mesh and nodes.
That they could overcome such problems themselves, deserve red salute, more so as they did not make 'just another' union getting disgruntled on existing four trade unions. What they wrote in their declaration is more significant: "Fellow Brothers, it is very disheartening that those we so far thought our umbrella-head-roof (we literally translated their expression, which denotes 'somewhere to take refuge', 'someone(s) to rely on, hinge on') — when those worthless leaders deserted us while we were facing extreme danger, it became obvious to us that those unions were not saviours of the workers, rather they were saviours of the capitalists. This fact awakened us and we chose our own road. We vowed to take hold of our rights depending solely on our own forces and formed our own organisation: CESC Contactors Mazdoor Sangh".
So there are indications that these workers want to abandon the traditional TU path, a painful tradition in Indian TU movement that has been for long dominated by trade unionism, bourgeois and revisionist ways of thoughts and practices, the TU 'cult' impregnated by them. Moreover, decades of existence of some sort of bourgeois-democratic structure, constitutional-legal framework, in spite of its being not even a quarter-democracy, etc have also left an imprint on the society as a whole and on the workers' movement; it served as an objective basis of the sore of legal-trade-unionism, too much dependence on labour-courts, courts, legal proceedings, and hence on outsider 'educated' babu leader. This crippled the workers. We find trade unions, in general, in India did not serve as 'school of communism'. The communist revolutionaries, who, after the defeat of the first offensive of the international communist movement, dare to think of the reawakening of the international communist movement, must strive to overcome that 'tradition' in TU movement. Workers, in general, must 'come out of the shadows', they must take the helm, and here TU can serve as a preparatory school. They need no spoon-feeding; they may need some 'help' at the beginning in some sphere of activities and CR activists should provide that help, but always cautiously, so that 'helping' does not end up in 'making them dependent'. Daily routine activities of the TU are not the domain of work of the CR activists, though at primary stage they may have to help and in many cases they will have to do so . Because they cannot desert those workers so far kept out from the tasks of union administration or union functioning, negotiations, writing answers to show-cause notices, etc, and taught to believe that 'workers cannot perform those tasks — they need outsider TU-expert leaders' . However, their task will be more of helping the leading workers to learn as quickly as possible to run their union themselves, simultaneously help the up-coming prospective workers fight 'old' ways so that the trade union continue work along 'class line'; and to help them develop into class-conscious workers. We are not going any farther, however, on this subject, as it deserves separate treatment. We mentioned this much only to emphasise that within their rebellions, as expressed in the 'new' stirs, fights and new organisation formations of the workers, an urge is being expressed, even if in a somewhat rudimentary way; that is the rebellion against 'old' practices. And the CR activists must take that in cognisance.
In recent years we are witnessing three different types of workers' struggles.
However, we must make it clear to the organisers that the First type does not at all deserve to be called "workers' struggle" as such even if thousands of workers are involved. As for example take the Airport Strike fiasco — which the 'old' leadership intentionally started to come to a bargain soon. The strike was started keeping ajar the possibility of quick-dialogue-quick-end: they started the strike keeping the Air-Traffic-Control out of the ambit of strike!! In the Railways Strike Ballot & the-strike-that-never-happened case: the unions from the very beginning desired solely an 'agreement' to form another Pay Commission that would snatch away more from the workers than would give them as happened through the last pay commission too. In this type of pseudo-struggles by which the workers are deceived, it may happen that workers' restlessness was the 'root cause' behind leadership's calling those strikes, the leaders did so to contain the movement within a limit, or, say, the workers fought 'militantly', etc. But the inner current of the fight is, in any and all such cases, not strong enough to cross the boundary, limit, when the leaders surrender. This 'inner strength' depends on (and make itself felt in) the preparatory phase of the struggle, the fighting environment in the society as a whole, the spontaneity arising out of assault of the capitalists-govt etc and many other factors — only activists having a finger on the pulse of the workers can gauge that. In this First type of [pseudo] struggles we may include the various 1-Day General Strikes or Bandhs called by the old established trade unions, mainly the revisionist led ones.
Secondly, we have such fights and new TU formations where the role of the workers is decisive and workers are fighting and getting organised separating from the old established trade unions. In this type we have those cases where CR activists got involved in the process — either by their past regular activities in and around, or the fighting workers coming to seek help. Cases where these are happening due to prolonged TU-fractional activity for years are becoming rare; rather we are witnessing spontaneous outbursts and then continuous efforts by the advancing workers and CR activists leading to 'new' TU formation. The CESC case comes closer to this type with a difference: they advanced to a somewhat developed stage independently, without the help of CR activists. So, it is not expected from TU activists to make any such move that will hinder the independent initiative of the workers. They need not interfere in day-to-day TU affairs and take up TU task(s) unless otherwise needed extraordinarily. Then, there is the strange phenomenon of Jute workers' struggles in WB since 2002: struggles without forming trade union organisations. It started with almost 100,000 workers starting strike spontaneously in more than 20 jute mills against the naked betrayal of all 'old' Trade Unions. They did so without any local plant level organisation at all. After that phase, still now, they are continuing their fights, thought unconnectedly in different mills at different time, whenever they are facing any serious assault — and this too is happening without any local plant level TU organisation! The latest example is the fight in the Delta Mill in Howrah District. It is not that these jute workers are doing that, i.e., not forming any TU, whimsically. They have summed up the history of Jute workers struggle in their own way — that sum up is incomplete and scrappy, but that sum up is leading them. As for example: To them creating just another union may upset the 100 percent unity of action that they are showing in their fights, it will expose worker leaders to threat, police intimidation, etc and in worst case, to buying up by the management and/or invite police-lumpen-etc attacks. Then, there is a strong disbelief, suspicion about 'union', 'party' etc in general. The present phase of Jute workers struggle needs special attention and special plan — the CR activists need to help their summing-up process. Additionally, the activists should help the workers in forming an advanced and fighting workers' network extending over several jute mills, but that too not artificially, as we would find in reality these potentially advanced workers.
Thirdly, there are cases like workers' struggles in Honda (Haryana), Toyota (Karnataka). Here the workers did their militant fight carrying the banners of their 'old' Trade Unions, but the very way they fought showed it amply clear that they went beyond the chalk-circle, limit or boundary imposed by those 'old' unions and leadership. In 'content', they belong to the 'new' struggles of rebel workers, but in 'form', they are yet to break apart from the 'old'. Here the tasks of the CR activists will be to help the fighting workers understand the nature of the 'old', the political reasons behind why the 'old' unions are like what they are, the emergence of the 'new' trend, why these workers' fights belong to the 'new', and why the resolution of the contradiction is needed and how. It would be a great folly if a 'new union' is artificially implanted there with the hope to crystallise fighting workers around that union; it would not be a 'new' union in true sense because the 'new' organisations are those coming up from 'below', may be with help of CR activists, but surely not those which are brainchild of 'top' coming mainly with initiative from 'above'.
There is a palpable concrete trend of development of new workers' struggles and organisations from below in the condition of [1] defeat of the first offensive of the international communist movement, [2] a low ebb of workers struggle that set in roughly from the mid 1980s, and [3] party-less-ness, i.e., absence of a real all-India proletarian party and a central TU that could have helped the development of workers' struggles and organisations from below. Workers struggles, organisations etc are coming up in diverse non-customary ways. The activists should attend each concrete case and concretely determine their tasks; they should not think to fit-all-in-a-pattern.
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