`The working class will oppose the judgment'

Interview with M.K. Pandhe, general-secretary, CITU.

Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) general-secretary M.K. Pandhe was assertive when he said that the workers' right to strike was a right recognised the world over. He said the working people won this right the hard way, after long and strenuous struggles, and that they would resist any attempt to deprive them of it. Tracing the history of the trade union movement from the early years of the struggle for Independence, the veteran trade unionist said that strike as a weapon of the workers had the approval of national leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. Excerpts from an interview he gave S. Viswanathan in Chennai on August 6:

The Supreme Court has held that government employees have no "fundamental, legal, moral or equitable" right to go on strike. What in your view is the nature of the right to strike work? Do you think that the court's interpretation will have a bearing on the right of the working people in general to resort to strike as the last weapon in disputes with the employer?

Government employees have the right to settle their grievances through collective bargaining, like other employees. This has been universally accepted. The International Labour Organisation [ILO] has approved of it through its conventions and declarations. According to these conventions, the trade unions of government employees have the same rights, including the right to bargain, as the unions of other employees. The right to strike has been allowed to the employees of both the Central and State governments. This is an internationally accepted right. The right to strike is allowed by convention, if not by law. The Union government, which has voted for the ILO conventions, can overrule the Supreme Court ruling on the right to strike, by strictly enforcing the ILO conventions and declarations. It should also be noted that the employees of the Central and State governments had gone on strike on numerous occasions. Even recently, in March, government employees all over the country went on strike. No government other than the Jayalalithaa government has been harsh to the strikers.

As for the Supreme Court's judgment on the right to strike, it has crossed its own limits and has argued against an issue that has been accepted by the Constitution of our country. During the freedom movement, even leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru approved of strikes. Gandhi addressed certain strike meetings; Nehru also supported a number of strikes and other struggles; Subhas Chandra Bose led a strike by steel workers at Jamshedpur. These are instances during the freedom movement. Veteran freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai also supported a number of strikes by the workers.

So, our national leadership had accepted strike as a weapon of the working class during the freedom movement. This was also included as a part of the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution. The Industrial Disputes Act has also allowed workers to go on strike. If a notice is given, a strike is legal. That is the position now in the country, thanks to the Industrial Disputes Act. How can the Supreme Court deny the worker a right that is provided by the law? This is a very shocking thing, to say the least. In 1920, for example, when the philanthropist and the follower of Annie Besant, B.P. Wadia, organised a strike in Buckingham and Carnatic Mills, a court awarded him a fine of Rs.2 lakhs. Wadia said in the court: "I have no money, Sir. I am a social worker. You can send me to jail; I cannot pay the fine." Ultimately the court could not collect any money from him.

But this created a consciousness among the people all over the country. That is why in 1925 N.M. Joshi, giving the example of the harassment of Wadia, brought in the Indian Trade Unions Act as a private member's Bill in the Central Legislative Assembly. [Joshi is considered the father of the Indian trade union movement.] The British government promised him that it would bring a Bill in this regard. So, in 1926, the Trade Unions Bill was passed. And, it said that a trade union leader could not be persecuted for trade union activity. And, even under that act, trade unions were allowed to call for strikes. So, whatever rights they had achieved during the freedom struggle, which was also admitted by the British government, cannot be withdrawn by a Supreme Court order. There will be strikes in the country despite Supreme Court orders, just as there were bandhs in the country after Supreme Court orders [against conducting bandhs]. Strikes cannot be stopped. A strike is the legitimate last weapon in the hands of the working class to fight against injustice done to them by the employers. Therefore the Supreme Court judgment will not be practically implemented in the country.

The ILO has adopted the Fundamental Principles of the Rights at Work, which provides for the working class the freedom of association as well as the right to strike. The Government of India supported that declaration and voted for it. And, now the question comes. After the Supreme Court judgment, the Government of India has to make certain legal enactments to overrule the Supreme Court judgment. That is why the trade union movement will ask the government to make necessary legislation so that the Supreme Court will not be allowed to go berserk and withdraw the rights achieved by the democratic and trade union movements over a period of years.

The trade union movement also will not keep quiet. We will have a convention at the national level, perhaps in September, to assert the working class' right to strike. No strike is organised on petty issues; it is only advised as the last weapon. We don't consider it as the first weapon; it is only the last weapon. But, after all the efforts fail to solve the issues of the workers, they have every right to go on strike.

The Judges have observed, in the course of the hearing of the appeals, that "strike is the most misused weapon" and they have also mentioned about the loss of man-days owing to strike. What have you to say on this observation?

In the data concerning strikes, you find that the loss of man-days owing to strike is much less than the loss of mandays owing to man-made accidents, unutilised capacities in industrial units and lay-offs and lock-outs resorted to by employers. The observation of the Supreme Court, therefore, has no validity. The Supreme Court has not said that lock-outs are illegal and so should be banned. And so, when lock-outs are permitted, the Supreme Court wants to ban strikes by the working class. Last year, the government statistics on industrial disputes had clearly shown that more man-days had been lost owing to lock-outs than because of strikes.

What do you think will be the implications of this judgment, which mainly pertains to government employees, for the rest of the working people?

The working class will definitely resist and oppose this judgment. The implications will be that strikes will take place in spite of the judgment, which will be ignored, whatever be its consequences. There will be strikes. For example, even this month, after the Supreme Court had made certain observations [criticising strikes], there were strikes in several parts of the country. Strikes are going on in Bihar, Jharkhand and other places. When the workers fail to get a dispute settled, in spite of using every other method, they have no way other than going on strike. That is the only way they can bring pressure on the employers. How can workers give up this right?

The court has said trade unions do not have a "guaranteed right to effective collective bargaining or to strike"...

The court has not taken into account the fact that this right [to strike] has been granted by governments in a number of countries. The right to strike has been accepted, even for government employees. The German government has, in fact, accepted the right to strike even of police personnel. The Supreme Court cannot say that the right to strike is not a fundamental right. It is a right that has been considered as a convention in the history of the trade union movement in India.

The world trade union movement shows that the right to strike has been accepted by various societies as a fundamental right. And you cannot deny that right to the working class. Like the right to work, the right to strike is also a right of the working class. Fighting against unjust working conditions is a right of the workers. Freedom from exploitation has been accepted as a worldwide right of the working class. Therefore, we are assertive on this question, also as a human right. The Supreme Court judgment therefore will have no practical validity for the trade union movement of the country. Whatever repression takes place, they will have to face it. There will be a big movement all over the county to assert this right and ultimately society would have to accept this right as one of the fundamental rights of the working class, which it achieved during the course of its struggles.

Without this right to strike, the trade union movement will become meaningless. When conciliation fails, when the employer does not negotiate with you, when he does not reply to your charter of demands, when he victimises workers on petty matters and when he is allowed to continue his exploitation of his workers, when he does not implement the labour laws and when the government is totally inactive, under such circumstances there is every right for the working class to go on strike. And this right will be asserted. Just as Tilak said "Swaraj is my birth right and I will have it", the working class will also declare that "the right to strike is a fundamental right and we will have it". And Judges cannot stop the right to strike.