Labour minister's bluff called

A QUICK, LIKELY SWERVE TO THE POLITICAL RIGHT
We of course are talking about the recent hukumnama of the Trinamul-run Bengal government. The concerned reference is to a series of very expected pronouncements by the labour minister – he of the ‘former’ Naxalite eponym.

As it has been borne out by the relentless stream of progress of history, those faithful of the infantile disordered ‘left,’ the ultras, the ‘left’ sectarians and their ilk, all, have a very and nothing-out-of-the-normal tendency to lurch to the political right given the first opportunity to do so. This is true especially as and when they crawl to an elected office.

Thus, we were not startled like some genteel, pristine souls, when the present labour minister, a resonant ‘former’ ‘Naxalite,’ invoked the imperialist law of the British colonial rule in India, as far back as to be of 1926 vintage, and chortled that he would not allow government employees to enjoy TU rights.

This right, we recall, had been allowed by the Bengal Left Front government in a well-thought-out GO of 1981, Hashim Abdul Halim as the Law Minister of the first Left Front government had steered the move in the cabinet and he told PD that the step was taken to ensure that the government employees enjoyed a full democratic functioning and were not drawn down by the fact that they were employed by the government. The TU right gave the employees the freedom to nurture and defend their right to life and livelihood.

This is the right that the present labour minister would like to nullify. The labour minister had also talked in the same vein about there being one association per one industry. These are moves, the CPI (M) leadership has conviction that the democratic masses would not take lying down in an act of passive political repose. A massive struggle would be launched under the stewardship of the CPI (M) and the left and democratic forces across the state once any nefarious anti-people initiatives would be taken.
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In this connection one recalls the section 2 sub-section ‘s’ of the industrial disputes act of 11 march 1947. The act clearly states what defines a ‘workman’, contravening the labour minister’s contention that workers-employees were not ‘workmen’ in the industrial sense. Thus by giving the government employees TU rights, since long denied to them, the pro-people LF government was merely doing justice to the demands of history.

This is history that can be neither undone nor distorted, however much the labour minister, applauded by the chief minister, and resuscitated by a corporate media that egg such nefarious efforts on, do desperate bid to deprive the workers-employees of their hard-earned right. In this connection we bring to mid what the CPI (M) leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said recently speaking at one of the very many Party conferences he addresses across Bengal that contrary to the fond hopes of the bourgeoisie, there has been to ‘end of history.’ The mass struggle shall go relentlessly on.