The increasing credibility deficit staring at trade unions in Munnar’s Kanan Devan plantations triggered violence on Wednesday, with miffed union workers on an indefinite agitation for wage hike allegedly stoning women workers who organised under their own, stridently apolitical, collective. The latter had re-launched their suspended agitation for the same cause on Wednesday.
The women worker’s collective has been openly shunning the unions and began their own indefinite day-night stir from Wednesday. The stoning, which left some policemen and mediapersons injured and the subsequent police action, forced the agitating women workers to retreat for the day. However, they have vowed to resume their own stir from Thursday, with an indefinite mass hunger strike. Three of the injured policemen have been admitted to the Tata Hospital here. The day began with workers associated with the trade unions converging for their own protest at one end of the newly constructed bridge in the town, and the women assembling at the other end. Though trade union leaders kept sending feelers to the women asking to join their agitation, the latter refused to oblige.
Repeated efforts of senior trade union leaders like INTUC’s A.K. Mani and politicians like CPI(M)’s S. Rajendran, MLA to persuade them to throw in with the trade unions too failed, while the trade union workers grew restless. Some of them tried to force their way into the agitation venue of the women workers a couple of times, which the police prevented on the bridge.
The women workers had refused to join the agitation launched by the trade unions even as the Plantation Labour Committee meeting held on September 26 to work out a solution failed to reach a consensus. The women had postponed their own agitation stating that they would prefer to wait for the subsequent meeting of the committee scheduled for September 29. They decided to re-launch their stir on Wednesday after the second meeting too failed.
Lissy Sunny, a leader of the women’s collective, said the the large turnout of women on Wednesday infuriated the trade unions.
She alleged that the union leaders had been threatening and abusing the women after they had spurned their bid to get them to join the agitating unions.
Police alerted
The women had approached the State Labour Minister Shibu Baby John, and the Munnar police were also alerted about possible threats to them.
‘Not attacked’
However, Mr. Mani maintained that the women workers were not attacked by trade union workers. He said the trade unions were willing to cooperate with the women workers and lead a joint campaign.
The trade unions will further intensify the agitation on Thursday, he added.
