Workers and employees have a democratic right to go on strike, but only as a last resort when all other means for fulfilling their essential and existential demands, inalienably linked to life and livelihood, fail to convince the management and the ruling government. So, the nationwide strike call by blue and white collar workers isn’t conceptually in conflict with the democratic polity. But has the decision been taken democratically? The central trade unions and other white collar organisations like the All India Bank Employees’ Association and Bank Employees’ Federation of India did not seek a strike ballot to ascertain whether the majority of working people wanted to stay out of work on February 28.
It is not that strike ballots are non-existent in the Indian trade union movement. A few years back, strike ballots were organised among BSNL’s award staff. Strike ballots have often proved effective in the interest of workers and employees. In the mid-1960s, the Kerala state government employees, under the Non-Gazetted Employees’ Association, organised a strike ballot based on a 10-plus-point charter of demands. A massive 94% of workers cast votes in favour of a strike. It forced the Congress-led government to accept most of the demands and nearly 100,000 workers did not go for a strike.
Nearly a decade ago, the AITUC general secretary and CPI leader in the Lok Sabha, Gurudas Dasgupta, who is also the president of the AITUC-affiliated Sangrami Shramik Karmachari Union, warned the CK Birla group that if the workers’ demands, including payment of wages on time, were not met and ‘illegal transfers’ were not stopped, the Union leadership would seek a strike ballot. But the AITUC didn’t even think of suggesting a strike ballot to other central unions before giving a call for the February 28 strike.
It’s very unfortunate that the central unions are averse to strike ballots to feel the pulse of members of their affiliates. Their leaders seem too afraid to confront strike ballots. Take the case of West Bengal’s jute industry. Every three years, jute mill workers go on indefinite strikes. Every time the strike ends with a tripartite agreement but defying the tripartite deals, there are bipartite mill-wise deals. This defiance reflects a lack of confidence in the leaders of central union affiliates like the CITU-led Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Unions and INTUC-affiliate National Union of Jute Workers.
All central TUs have a moral binding to seek strike ballots before giving a call for strike. The Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Workplaces adopted by the International Labour Conference in 1998, under the aegis of the International Labour Office, clamped an imperative on every union for strike ballot before even a one-day strike. ‘The rules of every trade union shall contain a provision,’ the consensus among the management, workmen and ILO officials unambiguously states. ‘The union shall not organise, participate in, sanction or support a strike or other industrial action without a secret ballot, entitlement to vote which shall be accorded equally to all members whom it is reasonable to believe at the time of the ballot for the union concerned to believe will be called upon to engage in the strike or other industrial action.’
The union too has to ‘ensure that every member entitled to vote in the ballot votes without interference from, or constraint imposed by, the union or any of its members, officials or employees and, so far as is reasonably possible, that such members shall be given a fair opportunity of voting.’
Strike ballots are cast secretly by members of a union to determine whether to go on a strike. If the majority of the union members are in favour of strike, the union is morally bound to give a call for strike with prior and proper intimation/notice to the management and the labour department of the concerned government.
However, provocative action at times may force employees/workers to skip strike ballots. There is no denying that the responsibility towards strike ballots by participant workmen lies with both the union and the management and the state has to take an assertive role as a watchdog apex.
By Sankar Ray (The writer is a veteran journalist & commentator, specializing in left politics and environment)
Source : DNA, Feb 28, 2012
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