Killer Bees, Worker Ants 5 Apr 08 (http://tehelka.com/story_main38.asp?filename=cr050408killerbees.asp)
The murder of Ram Parvesh Singh, an electric cable worker, by CITU goons is the story of the Left's growing anti-worker character, says H. SINGH
EVERY YEAR five to six contract workers of Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC) Limited, a company that supplies electricity to Kolkata and adjoining districts, die digging ditches in which electricity cables are to be laid. It generally occurs when a worker's pickaxe accidentally strikes some existing underground
cable. It is a horrible death - half the body evaporates and half of it is charred. The death of CESC worker Ram Parvesh Singh, 45, on March 10, however was different. He and 15 others were brought to Kolkata's National Medical College hospital after being beaten up by a mob.
All of them were active members of CESC Contract Mazdoor Sangh (CCMS), a union of contract workers of CESC. They allege that they were surrounded and beaten up by five truck-loads of men belonging to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the trade union wing of the CPMat a place called Ruby Katra. Baban Paswan, secretary of CCMS, says, "Ram Parvesh and colleagues were distributing leaflets and canvassing for the strike when they were attacked by CITU goons." The workers say they were assaulted because their union is not affiliated to any of the central trade unions or to any parliamentary political party. In short, because they dared to be independent. CCMS had called a 48-hour strike on March 10 and 11, demanding that the 22 labour-supply contract firms working for CESC respond to their charter of demands.
Their principal demand is that these firms and the state government recognise them as 'Electricity Workers', rather than 'Construction Workers,' a demand that has been ignored for twenty years. Why should they make such a demand, and why should it then be opposed? Shyam Sunder Ram, president of CCMS says, "It is a question of identity. Every year, some amongst us die on the job. If we are required to do such risky work, we need to be respectedfor it. CESC's permanent workers who handle high-voltage cables get Rs 5 lakh as compensation in the event of death. The maximum that we have ever got was Rs 153,000. Many times, we get no compensation at all. Even a casual worker in CESC gets a daily wage of Rs 225. We, being 'construction workers' under the contract system, get Rs 110 and 21 paise for a day's work. Most of us are Dalits from Bihar and UP. Yes, we want parity in terms of wages and compensation, but more than that, ours is a struggle for izzat."
Abhash Chatterjee, the owner of one of the 22 contracting firms, retorts, "There is no such thing as an electrical worker. The Directory of Electrical Inspectors is the licensing body which conducts certain tests before anybody is given a designation. These men do not qualify for any higher designation. As far as their
safety is concerned, we are working closely with CITU to take care of that. We will be having our fourth workshop very soon. We have bought safety-jackets worth Rs 1,900 each. All workers are insured."
HERE, WE have a member of the employers association openly admitting that they work closely with CITU. He is confident that the regulations and authorities are
on his side. When, at the Til Jala police station, Investigating Officer of the case, Moinak Banerjee was asked who had murdered Ram Parvesh and why, he curtly replied, "I am not bound to disclose information to the media." This statement was delivered on March 12, on a day when local pressmen were already talking about the involvement of Gaurang Dutta, a CITU activist, in the violence. Incidentally, the FIR contains names of other CITU activists as well. Unlike the police, the CITU is not tight-lipped.
Divyanjan Chakraborty, general secretary of the All India Construction Workers Union (a CITU affiliate), did not deny that Dutta is a CITU activist or that CITU is being blamed for the murder. Instead, he said, "Ram Parvesh was drunk and fell down in a big drain near Ruby Hospital. Unfortunately, the striking union has registered a FIR, and Gaurang was named in it. The whole thing is a campaign to malign CITU." The lines are clearly drawn. On one side stands an amorphous mass of workers with a few nuclei like the CCMS. On the other stand employers, holding the hands of central trade union leaders and parliamentarians, guarded by officers in khaki.
It's a textbook example of neoliberalism at work, but one that leaves many questions unanswered. The most important being, how and why did a workers' organisation like CITU turn into a anti-worker outfit? Sharmista Choudhury, general secretary of the Kinnison unit of the National Jute Manufacturers' Corp. Ltd. Mazdoor Union, is one of the few women who have dared to step into trade union politics. She says, "In power for 30 years, the CPM has today become just another reactionary bourgeois government. In West Bengal, at least, CITU is but an extension of the government. Struggle is no longer on its agenda. The mill-owners are its natural allies, not the workers. The CITU can no longer call itself a trade union centre in the actual sense, because it negotiates on behalf of the owners, keeping the interest of the owners in mind. The CITU leadership is totally alienated from workers' aspirations and works to serve vested interests."
Subhash Roy, leader of the Shramik Sangram Committee, has more than four decades of experience in trade-union politics. The bearded elder holds a similar, albeit more eloquent, opinion. "The CPM had actually started abandoning the working class in the mid-60s. What they did after coming to power in West Bengal defined
their policy for the rest of the country. During the five years between 1977 and 1982, CITU would take every issue, even a petty issue, to the secretariat, under the slogan 'vam front sarkar, sangramer hathiyar' ('Left front government is our fighting weapon!'). This systematically eroded the fighting capacity of the working class.
The result was that when employers began their offensive in 1982, openly defying the state machinery, the workers were already politically disarmed.This led to the era of kalo chukt or 'black agreements', when union leaders consistently compromised workers' interests through under- the-table deals, leading to further degeneration of the party and its trade-union wing. So today, we have the party openly attacking peasants in Nandigram and workers in Kolkata," he says, adding, "This probably answers your 'How?' But the answer to your 'Why?' can be given in two words — 'class betrayal'. "
Despite this, one may still ask why the CITU (or the CPM) stoops to murder today? The answer is simple. Peasants and workers have finally begun to assert their independence and started to break out of the CPI (M) stranglehold. For the party, this simply amounts to revolt, which must be punished with death. A tiny section of the Indian working class has begun to stand up on its feet. Its incipient rejection of the traditional pattern of trade union politics deeply antagonises the existing labor aristocracy. It's this marginal group that Ram Parvesh represented. His was a death foretold.
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