Indian strikers need solidarity
Kunal Chattopadhyay and Rohit Prajapati
From December 11 1998 until September 2 1999 just under 250 workers at the Hema Chemical plant in Gujarat, India were on strike, demanding an end to the life-threatening and unsafe conditions in the factory. While the strike has now ended because the union no longer had the financial resources to support the workers, the battle to make conditions less deadly continues.
To understand the significance it is necessary to know something about the union that led it, the Vadodara Kamdar Union (Baroda Workers’ Union).
Trade unionism in India is split up extensively along party lines. Every political party has its own party-controlled union whose leaders are not accountable to the ordinary workers. Union leaders are rarely workers or sacked workers - instead they are usually party leaders.
The leaders carry out negotiations without keeping most workers involved or informed. Settlements are very often signed in English - which very few workers speak. Trade union members are not given full details of the type of deals struck behind their backs. Settlements hailed as victories are later found to contain increases in workloads or to exclude casual workers.
In the province of Gujarat, where the VKU is active, this is further complicated by three factors. Even reformist-led unions like the AITUC (led by the Communist Party of India) and the CITU (led by the Communist Party of India Marxist) are weak. On the other hand, Gandhian ideology is strong.
According to Mahatma Gandhi, the most important bourgeois nationalist leader of the freedom movement, the capitalists are not an exploiting class but only people who hold the social wealth in trust, so that class struggle is never the way to settle disputes between workers and the bourgeoisie.
The final factor is the strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its trade union wing, the BMS in the province. The BJP is dedicated to establishing that there is no class, no class identity, but the key identity is the Hindu identity.
Since the labour minister of Gujarat hails from Baroda, he therefore takes special care to fight against class struggle alternatives when they emerge.
The Vadodara Kamdar Union was established a quarter century ago, when a group of workers, members of the AITUC who supported Trotskyist politics, were victimised by the union bosses for this "crime". However, from the beginning, the workers, and the Indian Section of the Fourth International, decided that they would not build yet another party-controlled union.
The VKU therefore adhered from the beginning to the principles of working class democracy. The large majority of trade union leaders have been workers or sacked workers. Negotiations have been open, and based on militant class struggle.
Regular trade union schools have been organised to ensure that the political education of the members is real, and that no external bureaucracy can usurp their control over all the processes of union work.
The result was, that after an initially difficult period, the VKU began to make significant headway. The VKU has not been a narrow craft union, nor one interested solely in getting wage rises.
It has been active in a wide range of issues like the Narmada Dachan Andolan (the struggle against building big dams over the river Narmada which threatens numerous villages), the anti-price rise movement, women’s rights movement, and movements of rural workers and poor peasants.
The VKU, despite its name, has now made contacts well beyond Baroda. For instance, in Ankleswar, which is the fastest growing Chemical industrial complex in the province, VKU activists joined hands with local activists to fight for a number of demands.
A key demand was the introduction of minimum wages for the chemical workers, for in this industry there was none set in Gujarat.
Another was the struggle for health and safety. Though there are a number of existing laws, like the Factories Act of 1948, and though the Government of India has signed a number of ILO conventions, in practice health and safety issues are sorely neglected in India. Even in industries where far more skilled workers are recruited, like the nuclear power industry, the Indian establishment claims that Western norms are unnecessarily tight.
As for the chemical industry of Gujarat, even in industries where acid is routinely used, proper gloves are not always issued. The Ankleswar Rachao (Save Ankleswar) movement initiated by local workers with the collaboration of the VKU took up such issues. All this has made the VKU a special target of the rulers and the provincial BJP government.
It is in this context that the struggle at Hema Chemicals becomes so important. In trying to smash the strike, not only the owners of this particular factory, but the government, are showing their determination to finish off the union.
The Hema Chemical factory was established in 1965 and manufactures potassium and sodium bichromate, basic chromium sulphate, and other chromium-based chemicals. Chromium is used widely in alloy and metal plating; and bichromates form the raw material for a number of chemicals used as wood preservatives, for the manufacture of coloured glass, glaze, in tanneries, for pigments for lithography and som on.
The production process involves crushing chromate ore into small pieces and then roasting it after mixing with soda ash or lime at 1100 -1200 degrees centigrade in a reverberated furnace. Then the metal is cooled and the bichromate is extracted. Unit 1 of Hema Chemicals manufactures the bichromate, while Unit 2 crushes and roasts the ore.
Both units employ a little over 120 workers. In both units the health of the workers is at stake. Bichromate is hexavalent chromium, a human carcinogen. It also causes chemical rhinitis, chronic pharyngitis, and nasal perforation. It is known to cause lung cancer, skin ulcers, perforation of ear drums, damage to the respiratory tract, kidney damage, and allergic dermatitis.
Chromic acid mist has a history of causing toxic jaundice indicating damage to the liver. Lung fibrosis is also know to have occurred. The workers at the Hema Chemicals have fallen prey to all of these.
An incomplete medical examination by the Certifying Surgeon of the Factory Inspector’s office of Vadodara found 43 workers to be suffering from nasal perforation, while 23 were found to be suffering from forms of dermatitis.
The toes of two workers had to be amputated following secondary infection and gangrene. One of them also suffers from hydronephritis due to damage to the kidney.
The company violates most labour legislation. The chromium level at the factory is not monitored. As per the schedule 11 of the Factories Act, TLV for chromium is 0.05 mg/ sq. metre. The technology employed by the management is highly unsafe. In one of the units owned by the same management, Ushma Chemicals at the Nandesari industrial area of Baroda, an explosion in December 1996 killed four workers.
Concerned over health and safety, and as part of its strategy of fighting against the current trend of flouting health and safety norms in the name of liberalisation and competitiveness of Indian industry, the union had been agitating over these issues for a considerable period.
After being repeatedly prodded by the workers, the Factories Inspectorate filed a number of complaints against the company for violation of provisions of the Factory Act.
But the government never carried out systematic follow-ups, something not surprising for a ruling class for which the environment means little more than campaigns to Save the Tiger. And this emboldened the owners to carry out greater repression on the workers.
Even the medical people employed by the government in the Employees Sickness Insurance sector have failed to discharge their duties, by not providing proper diagnosis and treatment, or helping the workers to file compensation claims.
Finally came an arbitrary wage deduction from late 1998. Though the union got a stay order from the court, the management simply decided to ignore the order. It was at this juncture that the workers decided that a strike was the only weapon likely to succeed. Thus it came about that workers had to wage a bitter battle to implement laws.
The government of Gujarat made it clear where it stood. Neither Labour Commissioner, nor Factory Inspectorate put the least pressure on the management to comply with the law. Instead, on May 1, 1999, the government declared the strike illegal.
Using the government order, management brought the police to the factory gate and filed false charges against many workers.
Despite this and other incidents of intimidation, the strike continued till the beginning of September 1999. But at this stage, sustaining the workers became impossible.
Rural workers and poor peasants had so far contributed significant amounts, but for them, it was no longer possible to bear the burdens of maintaining close to 250 workers and their families. So the strike was called off, even as fresh legal attacks were launched against the company.
Though the union does not believe that a bourgeois court will by itself do much for the working class, it filed a case against the government, demanding that
(a) The court should quash the order declaring the strike prohibited;
(b) The court should compel the government to implement the Health and Safety laws;
(c) The internal environment of the plants should be improved, and workers in this period should be paid full wages even thought the plants will remain closed.
The workers are now facing a crisis. Some of the striking workers have not been taken back, and nearly two dozen of these are in need of serious medical treatment.
In order to continue the struggle politically, VKU and Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (Indian Section of the Fourth International) have decided to contest three industrial area seats in the forthcoming municipal elections in Gujarat. For this, too, funds are required. Unless health and safety are made the general issues of all workers, this kind of battle will not be waged seriously.
Send protest messages to the Chief Minister of Gujarat [fax +91-2712-22101], The Chairman, National Human Rights Commission 91-l1-3340016 or 3366537, and the Hema Chemicals Industries [-91-265-380129], with a copy to us by e-mail [email protected] or Fax +91-265-412499.
Financial aid is needed to sustain the sacked workers, and to provide them with medical care. Given the degree of newspaper coverage of this strike, these workers will not find it easy to get jobs elsewhere. The financial aid is therefore particularly urgent. Cheques payable to VKU should be sent to Hema Chemical Workers appeal, c/o PO Box 1109, London N4 2AA.