Support the NLC Contract workers Militant Strike!

NLC located 200 KMs from Chennai, operates the largest open-pit lignite mines in India, presently mining 24 MT of Lignite and has an installed capacity of 2,740 MW of electricity. It is part of Profit making Navratna group of Public sector Companies.

NLC located 200 KMs from Chennai, operates the largest open-pit lignite mines in India, presently mining 24 MT of Lignite and has an installed capacity of 2,740 MW of electricity. It is part of Profit making Navratna group of Public sector Companies. NLC employs over 30,000 people of all categories most of them as contract workers and casuals.

About 13,000 contract workers of Neyvelli Lignite Corporation (NLC), a public sector undertaking, are on indefinite strike from September 3, 2014. They are demanding the regularization of their jobs and wage revisions and few other demands.

Following earlier strikes and agitations of contract workers of NLC, Chennai High court had ordered regularization of the employment of all the contract workers of NLC in 2008. This order was challenged by the NLC management in the Supreme Court. It took about 5 years for the Supreme Court to uphold, in April 2013, the order of the Chennai high court.

NLC has been employing thousands of contract workers on regular basis. Most workers have served as contract workers for over 20 to 30 years. They are paid very poor wages compared to the regular workers. Even after the order of the Supreme Court, management of NLC has refused to regularize their jobs. In this situation, all the unions of contract workers gave a strike notice in August 2014.

Workers are demanding that all the contract workers be regularized. Till that happens contract workers are demanding equal wages for equal work and they should be paid a minimum salary of Rs.25,000 per month together with bonus and other benefits. Permanent workers have expressed their support for the contract workers and they are considering joining the strike in support of their comrades.

To thwart the strike, the NLC management went to the High Court to declare the proposed strike of the contract workers illegal. The High Court, far from condemning the NLC management for violating its 2008 order, as well as the 2013 Supreme Court order on regularization of the contract workers, has actually given an interim injunction barring the contract workers from exercising their democratic and legal right to strike against unjust treatment meted out to them! Instead of punishing the guilty, the court is punishing the victims and passing order against them! This shows very clearly that the judiciary system, besides the executive is thoroughly anti worker, and does not uphold the rights of workers, including the right to strike. This is why the High Court can declare the workers strike as “illegal” and a “contempt of court”, while it has ignored the actual contempt of court carried out by the NLC management.

The Tamilnadu Police has once again been deployed to attack the striking workers. Police has refused any permission for the workers to hold any kind of demonstration, agitation or meeting on this issue. Workers are determined and continuing various forms of struggles, road roko, rail roko and agitations all over Tamil Nadu every day. Thousands of striking and agitating workers are being arrested everyday to prevent them from continuing their struggle.

What is going on wih the contract workers of NLC is not an isolated phenomenon. The ruling capitalist class of our country is frenziedly pusuing the course of globalization through privatization and liberalization, to achieve its aim of sitting on the high table of the world’s leading imperialist powers. Towards this goal, it is privatizing public sector enterprises which have been established on the basis of the wealth created by the workers and peasants over the decades. To ensure maximum profits through the exploitation, plunder and ruin of the labour and natural resources of our people, it is attacking the hard won rights that workers have won through decades of collective struggle. Contract labour is now the norm. This is the case in Air India, BSNL and other public sector organizations as well as in all private and multi-national organizations. 

The role of the political parties in Tamilnadu has been exposed as thoroughly anti worker. Whenever the issue of privatization of NLC came up in the past, the government of the day, whether DMK or AIADMK has claimed to oppose it. This has been because of the pressure of the workers. However, these same governments have not hesitated to unleash the police on workers, and have refused to defend their rights as workers. These parties claim to defend the human rights of Tamils all over the world. But right in the heart of Tamil Nadu, in front of our very eyes, these parties are participating in attacking the human rights of workers. This exposes the fact that in the struggle between the exploiters and the exploited, these parties are firm defenders of the exploiters.

In spite of the attacks and threats of the capitalist state, NLC workers are carrying on their just and principled struggle in defence of their rights as workers. The CGPI hails the unity and fighting spirit of the workers. CGPI calls upon all the workers and their organizations to support this just struggle. 

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