Nine major central trade unions are gearing up for a nationwide strike in the first week of September to protest against price rise, outsourcing of jobs and disinvestments in public sector.
A convention of the trade unions, including the Indian National Trade Union Congress, the All India Trade Union Congress and the Centre for Indian Trade Unions is scheduled to be held in New Delhi on July 15 in this regard. “The meeting will chalk out an action plan to mount pressure against the government against its anti working class policies and a nationwide strike is likely from September first week,” CITU national secretary and former MP Dipankar Mukherjee said.
Mr. Mukherjee was speaking at the inaugural of the two-day seminar on “impact of liberalised economic policies on working class” organised by the State unit of CITU. He ridiculed the government's claim that price rise was a global phenomenon and questioned why the same global yardstick was not being adopted for implementing minimum wages.
He expressed concern over the ‘corporatisation' of politics with businessmen and industrialists making their way into Parliament in good numbers.
“We have known about ‘criminalisation' of politics when musclemen entered politics, but politics is being ‘corporatised' with the entry of businessmen,” he said.
Global scam
Though the CITU was not against competition or investments, it was opposed to ‘speculative capital' that was coming into the country. According to him, the campaign on climate change across the globe, too, was the ‘biggest global scam' where the developed countries, which contributed maximum to the pollution, were trying to do business out of carbon trading.
Several NGOs were working on the climate change issue and all these were funded by corporate firms which were primarily driven by greed for money.
CITU State secretary S. Veeraiah, who welcomed the participants, said that job and food security of the working class have become a problem after the advent of liberalisation policies. There was a need for trade unions to join hands for a sustained struggle against such policies.
