All India Agrilcultural Workers Union national Conference begins in Tiruchi

7th All India Conference of the All India Agricultural Workers Union started in Tiruch with the flag hoisting on Friday in Thiruchirappalli district, Tamil Nadu. Delegates session started on Saturday. The 3 day national conference will conclude on Monday with a huge farmers rally. Flags to be hoisted in the Delegates nagar and Public Meeting Nagar has been brought from Mudigonda in Andhra Pradesh and Chenganoor in Kerala respectively. The Andhra jatha was lead by AIAWU Andhra State Secretary Comrade Venkid and the Kerala Jatha was lead by KSKTU state secretary M V Govindan. Flag posts were brought from Keezhvenmani Martyrs column and Raymundanpatti Martyrs coloumn in Tanjavoor. The conference proceedings started with the hoisting of flag in public meeting ground (Jyothi Basu Nagar) by AIAWU All India Secretary Com. A Vijayaraghavan. The Delegate session was inaugurated by CPIM polit beureu member and AIKS President Com. S Ramachandran Pillai. The Delegates session is held in a nagar named after the revolutionary hero Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet. Com P Ramayya, AIAWU President presided over the Function. Later in the day Com Vijayaraghavan placed the organizational report and discussion has been started. 

The public meeting on Monday will be inaugurated by Tripura Chief Minister Com. Manik Sarkar. 750 delegates representing 48 Lakh members participate in the conference. 

Agrarian crisis looms over nation

The country was facing an unprecedented agrarian crisis owing to the neo-liberal economic policies adopted by the Centre and the capitalist path of development trodden by the ruling class since independence, said S. Ramachandran Pillai, president, All India Kisan Sabha here on Saturday.

Agriculture was becoming an unviable and a loss-making venture in view of the rising prices of agriculture inputs, implements and fertilisers on the one side and the declining prices of agricultural commodities the other , said Mr. Pillai while inaugurating the delegate session

Rising unemployment

Unemployment among agricultural workers was on the rise and peasants were selling their cattle and lands to meet their daily expenses. As a result, landlessness was growing at a faster pace. A chunk of agricultural workers were saddled with debt, he said adding that the neo-liberal economic policies had sounded death-knell for the traditional industries.

Pointing out that agricultural workers were the worst sufferers owing to the neo liberal economic policies, Mr. Pillai said agricultural labourers did not have any security in food , nutritional , health , employment and income sectors .

The government should pump in more money into the agriculture sector, expand irrigation facilities through public investments besides enhancing investments in science and technology. It should produce high yielding seeds and supply it to farmers.

‘Eyewash'

Terming the social security measures an eyewash , he alleged that the agricultural policies were formulated by the Indo–US Knowledge Initiative.

The AIAWU had been urging the Centre to pass a comprehensive legislation that would declare minimum wages for agricultural workers and provide social security measures for them. But, the Centre's response has been a deafening silence, , he claimed. The government's move to allow foreign direct investment in the retail, banking, insurance and defence sectors would only intensify the process of neo liberal economic policies putting the common man in dire straits, he said. A powerful and a united movement is the need of the hour to bring about a change in the government's policies, he added.

AIAWU president P. Ramaiah said liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation policies were putting heavy burdens on the living conditions of agricultural workers.

Member of Parliament and chairman of reception committee T.K. Rangarajan, senior CPI(M) leaders - R. Umanath and Papa Umanath  and Subhashini Ali, president, All India Democratic Women's Association took part in the opening of the three-day conference

 

P. Ramamurti Trade Union School & Research Centre foundation stone laid

In order to continuously promote ideological education and imparting training on strategic and tactical understanding to the organisers and cadres of progressive trade union movement, CITU has decided to establish a permanent Trade Union school and Research Centre at Saket, New Delhi as a memorial of the founder General Secretary of CITU and legendry trade union leader Comrade P. Ramamurti. The foundation stone of the building was laid by Comrade M. K. Pandhe in the presence of the Working Committee members from all over the country on 16th July 2010. The Working Committee has decided that each member of CITU will pay Rs.5.00 to mobilise fund to meet the construction and running cost of the building and the Institution.

The proposed schools will be set up on a 504 sq mts of land allotted by the government to the CITU at a concessional rate. CITU had made a payment of Rs 22 lakh for the piece of land.

"We are agreement-bound to complete the construction of the proposed school by September next year. Till then, our educational programme will continue from the CITU headquarters here," CITU All India Secretary Tapan Sen told.

Among other things, the school will provide basic knowledge about the economics and social science which are "crucially" required in a trade union, Sen said.

"It is to update the skill and understanding of the trade union activists to make them understand the changes in the situation, to make them able to analyze it, and at the same time to make them able to communicate to the people in a convincing manner and to organise them," he added.

CITU Working Committee Meeting

On 7th September General Strike:

The 3 day session of the Working Committee of CITU held at its headquarters, BTR Bhawan, New Delhi concluded today with a clarion call to its affiliates and the working class in general to deploy total organizational strength to ensure a reverberating success of the countrywide General Strike on 7th September 2010. This was the first meeting of the Working Committee presided over by A. K. Padmanabhan and the General Report presented by Tapan Sen, General Secretary both elected at the 13th conference of the CITU held at Chandigarh on 17-21 March 2010. 27 out of 35 Office Bearers and 100 out of 125 Working Committee Members attended the meeting.

A resolution moved by M. K. Pandhe extended full support to the strike call against unprecedented price rise, rampant violation of labour laws, contractorisation of workforce, disinvestment of profit making public sectors and for provision of universal social security for unorganized sector workers. The resolution called upon the entire working class irrespective of affiliations to make the General Strike a massive success and prepare for heightening the united struggle in the days to come for reversal of neo-liberal economic policies pursued by the UPA-II Government.

On Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS)

The Working Committee expressed very serious concern at the deplorable state of condition of the EPS. The pensionery benefit has gone down at atrociously low level. At the time introduction of the scheme the Government refused to accept of demand of CITU to link the pension benefit with price index and instead had decided to undertake review at regular interval. But actually no worthy name review to revise the benefit neutralising the rise in prices has taken place at all. The fan fare with which the EPS was imposed on the workers by the Government, now it cannot arrogantly avoid to act with financial contribution to keep the corpus of the EPS viable and ensuring benefit to the senior citizens of the country for a decent retired life. After all it is an all important matter of social security.

The Working Committee has decided to launch massive campaign and propaganda to lend support to exploited EPS beneficiaries and mounting pressure on the Government to come out with financial support to the EPS and also to organize resistance to any apprehended steps by the Government to restructure the scheme in furtherance to the neo-liberal policies causing more economic hardship to the current and future beneficiaries.

Against Privatisatioin, Opening up and Deregulations :

On the continued onslaught of privatization through dinvestment, the Working Committee noted that shares in blue chip PSUs is being carried on and already shares are being off-loaded at a price much below the price ruling in the share market in all cases disinvested so far. The Govt has already entered into free trade agreement with the ASEAN countries and recently similar free trade agreement is being negotiated with the European Union. Both together will mean almost total and unrestricted opening of our market for both industrial and agricultural products from abroad which is going to severely affect the domestic industries and already crisis-ridden agriculture. Hundred per cent FDI in retail trade including multi-brand products is also being actively considered by the Govt.

All these are going to create grievous consequences for the national economy and many more such steps for deregulation of the financial sector are on the anvil as the trend indicates. The ruling polity in India is in a hurry to completely deregulate the national economy and the domestic market to force upon similar opening and deregulation in other developing economies—all to facilitate a quicker recovery of the crisis ridden economies of the rich industrialised nations. The project of strategic alliance of Indian ruling polity with imperialism is in action through such hectic move of deregulation and disinvestments which needs to be understood comprehensively and propagated intensively among the people. The Working Committee decided that in course of the campaign centering round the forthcoming General Strike these issued should be highlighted.

Deregulation of Petroleum Pricing:

The increase in the price of petrol, diesel, LPG and Kerosene as a step towards complete deregulation of petroleum pricing will further aggravate the inflationary situation. The plea taken by the Govt that petrol/diesel/kerosene prices are raised owing to increase in international price of crude oil is totally untrue. Even on date the international price of crude oil, if converted into rupees per litre adding together refining cost and other incidentals is less than half the price of petrol diesel etc at the domestic market. Fact remains that the present high level of prices of petrol and diesel etc is because of heavy tax and duties extracted by the Governments from mass of the people. Whatever little subsidy still being given to people by the Govt in Kerosene and LPG, four times more is being extracted by the govt from the same people in the form of high tax and duties. In fact in case of petroleum products, mass of the common people have in fact subsidising the Govt.

The Working Committee further noted that deregulation of petroleum pricing will be the source of constant increase in prices and more and more burden on the common people in one hand and on the other hand the private operators both indigenous and foreign shall deploy all foul means to derive undue advantage out of the deregulated regime and the oil PSUs shall be put to serious disadvantage threatening commercial viability in the long term. Naturally the trade union movement of country must address this issue with this perspective understanding.