Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called on the capitalists not to throw workers out of jobs. Finance Minister Chidambaram has declared that the estimates being put out by ASSOCHAM and other capitalist associations about likely job cuts in India are wrong. They are both claiming that the central government will protect workers’ jobs. This flies in the face of the actual facts and experience of workers in numerous sectors of the economy, where capitalists have already started cutting jobs. Thousands have become unemployed all of a sudden in the garments industry, jewellery and other export oriented manufacturing, as well as real estate, retail trade, BPOs, entertainment and other services.

Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram are known for having championed capitalist reforms for many years now. They have all along been striving to give more ‘flexibility’ to Indian capitalist companies to hire and fire workers according to the ups and downs in the market. They have argued that this is essential for Indian companies to be globally competitive. Why then are they now talking against job cuts? Why this sudden concern for the welfare of workers?

The reason is that the Congress Party is worried about losing urban votes in the coming Lok Sabha elections if large scale job cuts take place before then. This has become a big worry given that many rural voters are already angry with the central government for having neglected agriculture and the needs of peasants. In other words, the about turn by champions of free market reforms on the question of job protection is an election stunt.

The capitalists, on their part, are cleverly using this situation to get whatever handouts they want from the government, in the name of “avoiding job cuts”. They are telling the government that unless special packages are given to boost corporate profits, they will have no alternative except to throw workers out of jobs. Thus, a well staged drama is being enacted between the capitalists and the ministers.

The first act of this drama took place in October, when Jet Airways announced its decision to throw many of its new recruits out of their jobs. Various ministers publicly spoke out against this decision. Government of India offered an attractive package of special benefits to the airline companies, after which Jet Airways announced that it was taking back the workers it had just thrown out. The ministers and the capitalists are both gaining from this drama, at the expense of the working people whose jobs are actually being cut or threatened with being cut.

Workers cannot rely on either the capitalists or the ministers of capitalist governments to protect their jobs from being lost. We must rely on our own strength, our unity and level of organization, and our fighting capacity, to protect our interests. We have to use our strength to fight for the right to work being recognised as a fundamental and justiciable right. We must fight with the aim of establishing worker-peasant rule, which will reorient the economy to ensure full employment to all persons who are willing to work.