Imphal, September 06, 2010: Ten central trade unions have jointly given a call for an All-India General Strike on September 7, i.e.tomorrow.

Trade Union Centre of India, Manipur State Committee has appealed to all sections of the people of the state to make tomorrow's general strike successful.

Meanwhile, All Manipur Bank Employees' Association ( AMBEA), CRU (NER) Centre of Medical and Sales Representatives' Union (North East region), Janata Dal (S), Manipur, Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), Manipur branch, etc.

have extended full support to tomorrow's general strike.

In a press release, general secretary of AMBEA said that all the Cooperative Banks and Rural Banks in Manipur will also take part in the general strike.

The all India general strike on September 7 is being called jointly by the INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, AICCTU against price rise, job losses, large scale disinvestment of public sector, rampant violation of labour laws, merger of bans, move for privatisation of bans, corporate loot of people's money in bans, merger of Rural Banks with the sponsoring bans, lack of protection of unorganised workers, etc.

The All India Emloyees' Association also demands exemption of Urban Banks' profit from income tax.

The CRU (NER) Centre of Medical and Sales Representatives' Union (NER) has also said that the strike has deep concern over total inaction on part of the Government of India to look into the problems of the distresses working class of country.

So all the medical and sales representatives working in Manipur will stop work tomorrow and write "All India General Strke" in their daily reports.

Ex-MP, W Kulabidhu, state president of JD (S), Manipur in a press release appealed to all citizens of the country to support the general strike and workers and peasants of the country get their demands.

INTUC has also apealed to all people of Manipur and the country to support the 12 hour general strike.

In another press release, N Rajesh Singh of Trade Union Centre of Manipur has welcomed the fact that the working class will be coming together to show their strength to the government and to the imperialist and native bourgeoisie and to protest against the blatantly anti-worker and anti-people policies of the government.

The Centre fully supports the struggle of the working class against price rise, for implementation of labour laws, for comprehensive social security for the unorganized sector and against privatization and the contract labour system.

The press release stated that as the crisis of imperialism grows more severe all over the world, in spite of bourgeois economists trying to persuade us that the situation is improving, the only possible answer for imperialism is to burden the working class and the consumer.

The Governments, whether the UPA in its present or past edition or the NDA or any other, have been following the neo-liberal credo of allowing the "free" market to solve all problems.

Actually, this has meant allowing the greatest leeway and concessions and help to big industry - the removal of all obstacles in its path - while burdening the working class with closures, retrenchments, contract system, casualisation privatization and price rise.

Whereas parliament has only hesitantly been able to trim down the legal rights of the workers, the judiciary has stepped in to fill the breach by unleashing a broadside upon the working class, inspired by globalization in place of the Constitution.

In spite of the suspicion of the workers at this spectacle, of the unions attached to the very parties whose policies have brought the calamity upon its heads, asking them to protest these policies, we call upon the working class to seize this moment and show a truly magnificent unity against the anti-worker and anti-people policies of the government.

However, we are unable to subscribe to the demands made by the organizers of the strike in the form in which they have been put forward.

We are therefore constrained to put forward, this, our independent stand upon the strike.

The organizers of the strike have called for opposing the privatization of profit making public sector undertakings.

Here they totally miss the point.

Privatisation is not a mere question of profits being diverted to the pockets of the bourgeoisie.

It engenders a philosophy which says that the state should have no role in social or economic life - the philosophy of neo-liberalism.

Privatisation of profit-making undertakings like telecom, the oil companies, etc.

may help the Ambani's and the Tata's to reap super-profits.

At the same time the privatization of loss-making undertakings like some in the food industry and airlines industry have not only helped mercantile industrialists to make a killing in the real estate market but have also deprived society of much-needed goods and services which are indispensable - irrespective of the profit earned.

The price of medicine must be counted, not in terms of Rupees but in terms of the lives saved.

The organizers of the strike have put forward a demand opposing the growing "contractorisation".

While this word has no clear meaning, the opposition seems to be only to the further pushing of the workers into the pernicious contract labour system.

It does not even say what our Supreme Court itself had said (when it held more liberal views) that the contract labour system needs to be done away with.

This dilution of the demand against the contract labour system is deliberate and not in the interests of the working class.

Whereas no one can deny that the demand in support of comprehensive social security for the unorganized sector are justified, by putting the demand in this form, they accept that social security laws for the unorganized sector will be different from those for the organized sector.

We call upon the working class to fight for the extension of the same rights to social security as enjoyed by the organized sector to the unorganized sector.

Of course, the actual benefits available even to the organized sector are meager and require an upward revision, especially in these times of economic crises, low interest rates and increasing inflationary pressures.

The Centre also calls upon the workers to strike against the life-challenging price rise engendered by the policies of the Government.

The Centre wants the working class to realize that the current price rise is not, like previous price rises, the result of black marketers and hoarders but is the result of the Government policies which have had the result of legalizing the black market and hoarding.

Food grains have become the subject of speculation on the futures market and FCI godowns are being given to private traders to store their grain.

While fully supporting this strike on 7th September, we also call upon the working class not to let this strike, like the scores that have preceded it, become a mere flash in the pan.

This strike must signal the start of a continuous movement to take up the demands of the workers in a sustained and systematic fashion.

"Workers realise that there is no way to stop such depredations like closures, the contract labour system and price rise within the current framework.

We have to fight the system itself.

It is not the workers who are to blame for the lack of politicization in the working class movement, it is the leadership.

Unions like the INTUC, CITU and AITUC, while calling upon the working class to support such strikes, end up also extolling the workers to support the Congress, the CPM and CPI respectively.

This is no answer for the working class.

Other unions like the IFTU are taking an independent stand on the strike.

We call upon the workers to unite with all like-minded unions and politicize this struggle and to take it on towards a struggle for real democracy and for socialism," the press release stated.

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