Within a fortnight of the ILO's 93rd annual conference in Geneva, its Director-General Juan Somavia was in the Italian city of Genoa addressing trade union activists from across the globe. ILO's future agenda, he said, was the "creation of ethical markets to ensure fair globalisation". When the Indian trade unionists, enraged by this globalisation fetish, returned home, there was this heartwarming sight at the Honda Motorcyles and Scooters India factory in Gurgaon.

Although the CPI(M)'s political-organisational report has asked the cadres "to engage with" the existing realities (meaning markets), the party has been helping the unionists revive the movement at least in north India. Gurgaon proved that. That the CPI(M) could clear its report only in Kolkata after failing to evolve a consensus at its 18th party congress in April was not coincidental. West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya needed some kind of an official endorsement to further his reforms agenda. His Politburo colleague and Tripura counterpart Manik Sarkar too was keen on it as he had been chasing German companies for funds. "Whenever the CPI(M)-led state governments are hard-pressed for funds but duty-bound to provide relief to the people and are offered loans by imperialist agencies and western governments, the party should consent to such loans only if it does not weaken its fight against the imperialist-dictated policies," the report had said.

However, corporate India's tryst with one of its bloodiest labour militancy in recent times was not an incident where the Left's internal contradictions were shadowed by the resurgence of unions. Suddenly, the Congress entered the picture, riding piggy-back on the Left's pro-workers campaign by lending its hand to the affiliated unions. After the police crackdown, inter-union politics came to the fore with sections in the CPI(M)-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) suggesting that at the time of signing an earlier undertaking, the Honda employees had been misguided by the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), a feeder outfit of the CPI. "The Honda case is not the first instance of labour unrest in north India. In the past few months, we have handled similar cases and resolved them," says CITU Secretary Tapan Sen. An auto components company named Speedomax in Gurgaon is where he claims CITU brokered peace between the management and workers.

At the same time, the communist labour unions say, their political leadership has often failed to bargain a fair deal for them. This is where the Congress has the edge by virtue of being in power in some northern states. The Congress wants to play the game of being the troubleshooter for both the workers and the Government, pleasing both. And the leftist trade unions feel the pressure of their agenda being hijacked by the Congress.

THE FIGHT

CONGRESS WANTS To piggyback on the July 25 incident. Sonia has got the NAC to circulate a note on the Unorganised Sector Worker's Social Security Bill even before the Left's public outcry. LEFT WANTS To highlight lack of cooperation from the Congress in states where it is in power even as the party is taking credit for the Left's spade work in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill.

In 2004 CITU found that in Punjab there was this policy of discouraging the formation of trade unions in unorganised sectors. An example was the Ludhiana unit of Hero Cycles where, according to CITU, the management was crushing attempts to form unions. Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the then CPI(M) general secretary, promptly wrote to Chief Minister Amarinder Singh anticipating that a "friendly" Government would act well. But nothing happened. So, the Left has taken Congress President Sonia Gandhi's reprimand of Haryana Chief Minister Bupinder Singh Hooda with a pinch of salt. The Left's enthusiasm in Haryana is natural because trade unionism has never been much of a movement there. In the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh whose industrial belt had once been the undivided Communist Party of India's bastion, things are not exactly the same. The glass bangle factories of Ferozabad are teeming with unhappy workers for whom CITU and AITUC have been fighting. But Chief Minister Mulyam Singh Yadav has not gone out of his way to please the Left.

The political fallout of the Gurgaon incident has been arrested by Sonia's effective handling of the situation but the Left is unlikely to give up its hopes on Haryana since the incident offers an opportunity to spread its political wings.

Moreover, pushed out of the mainstream by the reforms programme, the trade unions need a breather. But their conflict with the parties they are affiliated to make the movement unsustainable. CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Mukherjee says, "The unions also suffer from lack of coordination and solidarity. Powerful movements in one industry are seldom backed by mobilisations in other industries or sectors."

The Congress is indeed trying to keep pace. Sonia has already claimed credit for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill which, according to cpi(m) General Secretary Prakash Karat, is one of the biggest policy achievements of the Left. After the Gurgaon standoff, the Congress sensed that the Left would raise its demand for the Unorganised Sector Worker's Social Security Bill. So, Sonia's National Advisory Council (NAC) prepared a note on the intended legislation and sent it to the offices of the left parties as a pre-emptive move. While the bill is unlikely to be tabled in Parliament in the current session, once legislated, it could provide social security benefits to 30 crore workers. The bill could make a happier lot of the hundreds of workers in the informal sector, which forms 92 per cent of the nation's labour force. Anyhow, the bill alone may not save them unless amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Labour Act are pursued.

For the moment, the Congress has expressed nothing more than its desire to be projected as a worker's party, exploiting the Haryana incident as much as the Left.

Index