• Defend the Right to Strike —a Right of All workers in All sectors!
  Support and participate in the all-India Strike on 24th February!
  Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, February 10, 2004

• Supreme Court and the Right to Strike

• On the announcement of the 14th Lok Sabha Elections

Defend the Right to Strike —a Right of All workers in All sectors!
Support and participate in the all-India Strike on 24th February!

Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, February 10, 2004

Workers and working people throughout India are uniting in defence of the right to strike.

Workers and working intellectuals in heavy industry, mines, energy, defence production, transport, banking and insurance, schools and universities, hospitals and other social sectors, as well as all government employees, are extremely angry. They are angry with the verdict of the Supreme Court against their right to strike, precisely at a time when they face wage cuts, job cuts and other attacks on their working conditions, in the name of disinvestment and economic reforms.

The Supreme Court justified the dismissal and arrests of thousands of government employees in Tamil Nadu, for daring to go on strike against arbitrary cuts in their take home pay and pension benefits. The entire bourgeois class cheered and applauded this blatantly anti-worker verdict of the Supreme Court. The working class has condemned this verdict in one voice.

The working class has gained international recognition and respect for the right to strike, through many decades of heroic struggle. Several generations of workers in India have contributed to this struggle, and so have the workers of Europe, America, Asia and all over the world. By daring to deprive lakhs of workers in India of the right to strike, the Indian bourgeoisie is striving to take society backwards.

The working class has decided to organise a one-day all-India Strike in defence of the Right to Strike, on 24th February, 2004. This an important step forward in the ongoing struggle of the working class to defeat the capitalist offensive.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India congratulates all the workers who have decided to boldly resist the fascist onslaught of the bourgeoisie on their rights!

Why is the bourgeoisie so concerned in outlawing the right to strike in government and public services at this time? The reason lies in the broad and mounting opposition to the privatisation program. The organised working class has risen in struggle to end this program. The most directly threatened sections – including Public Sector workers, government employees and social sector
workers – have been active in this struggle. The bourgeoisie wants to smash this struggle.

Strike is not something any worker likes to engage in, if it can be avoided. Workers generally engage in strikes only when their wages and benefits are attacked, when conditions become intolerable and there is no other means to address their problems. In India today, only a minority of workers actually have the possibility of using the weapon of strike in their day-to-day struggle against exploitation. These are the workers who are unionised, and a very large section of unionised workers are in the government and in public services. For the majority of workers who are not unionised, to strike work means to risk losing their jobs immediately.

By depriving a large and most organised section of the workers, those capable of using the weapon of strike, of the right to do so, the bourgeoisie wants to terrorise the entire working class. But the workers have refused to be terrorised. Workers in all sectors and all regions, cutting across party and union affiliation, are uniting in defence of the right to strike. Workers’ unions have begun to put pressure on every political party to take a position on the question of the right to strike.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India hails the decision of workers to demand of every political party to spell out its position on the question of the right to strike!

There are some within the working class movement who are pointing to the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections as an excuse not to participate in the one day all-India strike on 24th February. Workers must not accept this excuse. What have the Lok Sabha elections got to do with a matter of fundamental principle, such as the right to strike? Those who give such excuses are guilty of subordinating the basic interests of the working class to the narrow interests of bourgeois party rivalry. They are more interested in gathering votes for their party than in leading the combined struggle of all workers. We workers must not allow our fighting unity against the bourgeoisie to be weakened by those who push their narrow electoral politics.

The potential strength of the Indian working class is immense. When united with the strength of the masses of peasants of our land, we can become an irresistible force capable of sweeping away the capitalist system and the rule of the bourgeoisie. The challenge before us is to recognise our strength and organise to build on this strength.

Let us make the 24th February all-India strike a success! Let us oppose and expose those who are giving the excuse of elections to break this strike! Let us strive to organise more and bigger united mass actions during the year 2004! Let us prepare to greet the new Government, expected to take charge in May, with renewed and stepped up struggle in defence of our rights and against the privatisation and liberalisation program.

Inquilab Zindabad!

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Supreme Court and the Right to Strike

The Supreme Court of India has declared that government employees and public service workers have no right to strike, asserting that a strike, by its very nature, leads to suffering for society and the "public at large". The judges did not even pose the question as to whether the economic and political systems in India, in the absence of any strikes, benefit the public at large or only benefit a small minority.

While pronouncing their verdict, the judges also asserted that "Strike as a weapon is mostly misused, which results in chaos and total mal-administration." This logic is no different than the medieval Brahmanical dictat that the labouring castes have only duties and no rights, because if they have rights then they will allegedly misuse them.

In the interests of the capitalists having the freedom to hire and fire workers at will, so as to maximise their private profits, the workers are being told that they must agree to be slaves, at the mercy of their employers and devoid of any rights.

The Supreme Court has acted directly in the interests of fulfilling the greed of the capitalist class and against the fundamental interests of the working class. This clearly exposes, once again, the class character of the judiciary. It shows the necessity for the working class to fight for its own state power and a new fundamental law that would guarantee the rights of the toilers.

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On the announcement of the 14th Lok Sabha Elections

Elections have been announced at a time when the workers’ unions have joined hands cutting across party barriers, in their common opposition to the capitalist reform program and the attacks on their basic rights. The struggle of the organised working class has managed to temporarily stall the plans of the Disinvestment Ministry. Peasants all over the country have expressed powerfully their opposition to the course of trade liberalisation and cutbacks in state support to agriculture.

By advancing the elections, the bourgeoisie hopes to once again fool the people, disrupt their growing resistance and regain the initiative to accelerate the second generation reforms, claiming that it has the ‘mandate’ to continue attacking the livelihood and rights of the masses.

As soon as the decision to advance the elections became known, the governments at the center and in various states have started announcing ‘populist’ measures to woo the voters. The very same governments which implement privatisation and anti-people ‘reforms’, and hand out favours and all kinds of lucrative deals to the capitalists and imperialists all through their tenure, are suddenly promising handouts to the workers and peasants.

Just on the eve of dissolving the Parliament, the Union Cabinet decided to regularise slums in Delhi that were established until 2002. The Finance Minister made major promises to the peasantry, to central government employees and some other oppressed sections of society. State governments are promising electricity bill waivers for peasants. The Government of Tamil Nadu has announced various ‘concessions’ to the employees who have been persecuted and dismissed for going on strike.

Workers, peasants, women and youth of India cannot and must not fall for the false promises and ‘concessions’ offered by the BJP, Congress and other bourgeois parties at this time. Life experience has proved that the rival parliamentary coalitions have one and the same aim. Both riva coalitions – currently led by the BJP and by the Congress Party at the all-India level – represent the interests of the capitalist class, with the Tatas, Birlas and Reliance at the head. They are both committed to implement the same program of the bourgeoisie – of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation.

When seeking the votes of the masses, these rival bourgeois parties sing a popular tune; but once in power, they act in the interests of the bourgeoisie and implement anti-popular measures. In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party swept the polls with the slogan of ‘Garibi Hatao’. It promised to eliminate poverty; but once in power, it acted in the interests of making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. In exactly the same style, the BJP is today promising to make India shine and is hoping to sweep the polls with the slogan of the ‘feel good’ factor.

Life experience has shown that the periodic elections organised in India have only served the bourgeoisie to select which of its representatives are better suited to deceive the people and manage the bourgeois state power at any particular time. Under the present political system and electoral process, the majority of people do not determine who will form the government. They are reduced to becoming vote banks of one or another party of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie decides which party is better suited to form the government, and backs that party and its slogans, with as much money and muscle power as is needed to win the race.

The strategic aim of the working class movement is to replace the existing capitalist democracy by a new system of worker-peasant democracy. The existing political process must be replaced with a new political process with new mechanisms that ensure that workers and peasants can actually exercise political power. The Lok Sabha elections have to be approached with this strategic aim in mind.

The situation demands that all Indian communists and working class organisations must put forth the alternative to the capitalist reform program, and call on all workers and peasants to unite around this alternative. We must boldly plunge into the task of building an independent revolutionary front of workers, peasants, women and youth, against capitalism and the bourgeoisie.

We must oppose those within the ranks of the working class movement who advocate tailing behind the thoroughly discredited Congress Party or some other bourgeois party, in the name of defeating the BJP. The immediate aim of the struggle of the workers and peasants is not the continuation of capitalist reforms without the BJP. The immediate aim is to halt this program and change the direction of the economy.

Workers, peasants, women and youth must refuse to vote for any party or candidate that supports the capitalist reform program. We must reject anyone who does not defend and fight for the rights of the toiling masses, including the right to strike.

Every effort must be made to select and support candidates from amongst the communists and organisations of workers, peasants, women and youth, who would steadfastly defend the interests of the toilers and resolutely oppose the bourgeois offensive. We must select and support candidates who are committed to fight to halt the privatisation and liberalisation program, and for the reorientation of India to ensure prosperity and protection for all the toilers and tillers. The occasion of the Lok Sabha elections can and must be used in the interests of the independent aim of the working class. The election campaign must be used to push forward the demands of the masses. It must be used to build and strengthen the fighting unity of workers, peasants, women and youth, against capitalism and the bourgeois offensive.

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