| If the Left playing Opposition in the Parliament was not enough, now the Left-affiliated central trade unions are up in arms against the Government. On July 25, leaders of all such trade unions converged on the Constitution Club in Delhi to prepare the ground for a nationwide general strike on December 14. The call to employees from various industries in the organised sector is based on a charter of 16 demands ranging from an urban employment guarantee scheme to ban on outsourcing of labour and contractual hiring. If the Centre fails to fulfil these demands, more strikes would be witnessed in the remaining two years of the UPA regime. This warning was given by Gurudas Dasgupta, president of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) who stated that the ruling coalition's negligence of workers' rights would cost the economy through mass strikes. Using their parliamentary might, the Left parties are reverting to militant old-generation trade unionism. The trade unions claim that their membership has improved in the past few years, though the Labour Ministry is yet to verify the claim. The Left labour organisations have realised that the new economy is redefining the character of the working class. With their political patrons anchoring the UPA Government, AITUC and CITU are spreading themselves thick. Employees from not just the organised sector but also from the unorganised are increasingly getting attached to the communist trade unions. While the unorganised sector has traditionally been ruled by the BJP-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), sections of it are now turning to Left unions. In the past two and half years of the UPA Government, AITUC and CITU have changed their approach to labour issues. What earlier required lung power, now needs a negotiating table. In the past, when the Left parties were not as strongly represented in the Parliament as now, their trade unions had to take the regular route of protests. These days, however, the story is different. "Ever since he became the prime minister, Manmohan Singh has met AITUC leaders only once but we see to it that the Government does not become complacent," says Dasgupta. CPI General-Secretary A.B. Bardhan, himself a trade unionist, lends his party's full support to the AITUC. If Dasgupta fails to pursue the Government through his movement, Bardhan tries to convince the UPA leaders.
The rise in union activities, especially of the Left, in the past two years is probably a reflection of how desperately the Central Government is dependent on the Left Front. "It's only natural for the Left parties to help the trade union movement because we all represent the working class," says another union veteran M.K. Pandhe, who is a politburo member of the CPM and president of CITU. Like the CPM leads the Left Front and intervenes in policy decisions, CITU leads the current trade union movement. Apart from Pandhe, his politburo colleagues from the movement, MPs Chittabrata Mazumdhar and Brinda Karat, don't leave a single opportunity to bargain inside Parliament. "The right to negotiate is becoming an effective tool in our movement since the enemy is within," says Pandhe.  "While the PM has met us only once, we see to it that the Government doesn't get complacent."
GURUDAS DASGUPTA, PRESIDENT, AITUC | |  "The right to negotiate is becoming an effective tool as the enemy is within."
M.K. PANDHE, PRESIDENT, CITU
| Within the Left, however, there are divisions over the role of the trade unions. Following a nationwide strike in the last week of September in which almost 50 million workers participated, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee apologised to the infotech companies in Kolkata for the inconvenience caused by the strike. Thereafter, the chief minister wanted the politburo to decree that the IT industry should be kept out of union activities as it wasn't a traditional industry and couldn't be governed by the same rules. Pandhe and Muzumdhar, however, forced CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat to announce that unions had the right to organise themselves even in the it sector.
Not everyone from the Left or among the trade unions is pleased with the increased visibility of the unions. "The UPA allies and the Left leadership seem to be very concerned with the macro idea of economic reforms whereas they should be addressing specific problems like casualisation of the workforce more intensely," says CPI(M-L) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya. Having chaired his party's labour arm, the All India Central Council of Trade Unions for a long time, Bhattacharya feels the Congress Party's anti-labour policies can be corrected through greater political intimidation by the Left. The Left unions accuse the Congress-affiliated Indian National Trade Union Congress of "soft peddling" main issues of the working class. The Reds say that a greater coordination between their unions and the Congress labour arm could result in intensifying pressure on the Government. The challenge before the Left unions now is to enter industries like it, biotech and business process outsourcing. Their understanding of the new economy would be incomplete without representation from these sectors. Index
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PRICE CUTS: Bring down the prices of all essential commodities, scrap the new consumer indices.
