Parliament rushed through and passed the “Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008’ in its winter session. It must be noted that ensuring rights of an estimated 94% of the workforce, who are characterised as unorganised sector workers, was high on the National Common Minimum Program of the UPA government worked out with the Left parties in 2004.

On February 17, 2009, workers from all across the country organised under the banner of the National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers (NCC-USW) organised a protest demonstration in front of parliament to condemn the government for betrayal of its promises to the crores of workers of this sector of our economy.

Workers demanded a comprehensive legislation which would include mechanisms as well as financial allocations, to ensure the rights of the estimated 40 crore workers of this sector. The Act passed by parliament is a travesty, a toothless and retrogressive act, they declared.

What has working class been demanding?

Working class has been demanding that all those who work be recognised as workers, their conditions of work be regulated, and they are guaranteed rights and social security by the state. Workers are contributing to the social product, and they deserve security, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of right.

Working class has been demanding that there be separate legislations for agricultural workers, and for the rest of the workers who have no rights, to deal with the specificity of problems faced by the crores of agricultural workers.

Working class has noted that an extremely small section of workers of our country have even a modicum of protection. This too is under attack from the capitalists, the governments and the Courts. Labour legislations are openly violated, even in the so called organised sector, that is, the sector of the economy covered by some labour legislation; a majority of workers are not even unionised. Again, in this same “organised sector”, including the so called public sector, lakhs of workers are hired on contract and kept on temporary muster rolls for years on end, without any security of livelihood, or even minimal rights. The successive rulings of Supreme Court on Contract Labour has effectively legalised contract labour wherever bourgeoisie needs it.  

Organisations of the working class have put forth proposals to ensure that a comprehensive legislation be passed by Central government, with enabling mechanisms, to ensure that the different categories of workers in terms of occupation, including women workers, have their rights guaranteed. They have demanded that workers organisations be involved in the dispute settlement mechanism, as well as that government clearly spell out a time bound implementation plan, and wherefrom and how much monies will be provided, in the Act.

The legislation passed by parliament has bypassed all these concerns. These concerns have been the matter of discussion in hundreds of meetings of the different consultative bodies, including the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), the Labour Ministry, the Standing Conference on Labour, the meetings of Central Trade Unions with the government bodies, the meetings of organisations like NCC-USW with the different government and quasi government bodies, and so on. They were raised by numerous parliamentarians, belonging to different political parties, including the ruling coalition, the opposition parties, and the CPI and CPIM.

What does this reveal?

The struggle for the rights of the working class and working people has been a long standing one. It did not begin with the UPA government and it will not end with the UPA government going out of being. However, the fact that a government “committed” to ensuring such legislation, a government which survived on the support of the parties of the Left Front for four years, finally came out with such a act which denies workers their rights, raises basic issues.

The problem is this. The capitalists declare openly that the only “right” that must be guaranteed in India is the right of the capitalists, Indian and foreign, to make maximum profits. The role of the government is to assist this in various ways, including deploying public funds looted from the working masses for the same. They openly state that monies spent on workers (and peasants) is “unproductive”, it is condemned as a “wasteful subsidy”, while monies spent on capitalists is “productive”:

On the other hand, the political parties of the capitalist class, whether ruling or opposition, are constrained to declare their “support” to workers and working people, because they have a task, within this sytem, of winning votes, and of fooling the working masses while carrying out the agenda of the bourgeoisie. So where it ends up is that finally all these politicians of the capitalist class, as representatives of this or that political party in parliament, shed tears on behalf of the workers, but approve a legislation which is essentially a fraud on workers. They buy into the argument of the capitalist class, and its key ministers, that there is no money. They buy into the argument of the capitalist class that workers rights are nothing but “charity”, which government can ill afford.

As the debates in parliament and various other forums have revealed, not one of the parties, including the CPI and CPIM, not one of the MP’s including those of the “Left Front”, made it a make or break issue. It would not be wrong to draw the conclusion that  they all collaborated in dragging the process right through five years, tried to create dissensions in the ranks of those fighting for such rights, and then finally passed an Act which has no teeth.

The struggle of workers for their rights will continue. As we fight for a legislation that actually guarantees these rights with enabling mechanisms, we must step up the work to organise workers to take political power into their own hands. This is the most difficult, yet most decisive task. The point is to organise all workers to take political power into their own hands. Both in the immediate and ultimate sense, only political power in the hands of working class can guarantee rights for workers as workers. Let us learn the lessons from the ongoing struggle, and concentrate on building the organisations of workers for political power, even as we continue the fight for a labour legislation that guarantees rights for all workers.