(India’s coal mine workers held a historic two-day all-India strike against central government's move of denationalization and privatization of coal industry through the Coal Ordinance.
This was the first major resistance put up by organized workers in the last seven months of the Modi Government.
This government, which has been launching an all-out attack on the rights of working class through amendments in labour laws and policies of privatization, disinvestment and FDI, was forced to talk to workers’ representatives. The government was forced, in a written agreement, to form a committee comprising of coal ministry officials and trade unions to look into the matter of privatization and other issues raised by the strike.
AICCTU affiliate, the Coal Mines Workers' Union (CMWU), participated actively in the Strike. AICCTU leader Sukhdev Prasad reports from Dhanbad.)
The countrywide hartal on 6-7 January 2015 by 5 lakh coal workers of CIL and Coal Outsourcing was extremely effective and successful.
After the 1 lakh 86 thousand crore coalgate scam through the coal block allocations came to light, the Supreme Court cancelled 214 allocations. With the exposure of this huge scam the corrupt officials and companies should have been punished but the Modi govt, instead of punishing them, gave these 214 companies compensation for losses and with shameless haste brought an ordinance through which all the coal blocks were re-auctioned and the concerned companies were given free rein to sell coal and the concerned lands were also made over to those companies.
On 24 Nov 2014 all the 5 unions in the JBCCI called for a hartal. 4 out of these 5 unions postponed their hartal after an assurance from the coal minister, but the coal workers stood up against this decision. As a result the above 4 recognized unions called for a 5 day hartal from 6-10 Jan 2015. CITU and AICCTU, supporting the 5 day strike call, decided on 13 Jan as their hartal day and gave a strike notice to this effect, closing any possibility of the 4 recognized unions taking back their strike call.
When the hartal started on 6 Jan, AICCTU and CMW came out in full force in ECL, BCCL, and CCL, i.e the entire coal belt of Jharkhand. The coal workers joined the strike with a voluntary energy fed by years of anger and injustice. Generally, a hartal sees a bigger strike in the morning shift and average strike in the afternoon shift. Work starts again in the night shift. But this time on 6 Jan there was such total strike in all the 3 shifts that the hartal was prolonged and carried over to 7 Jan. Generally in a one day hartal a few workers report for work, but this time this did not happen. All processes of coal transportation, whether truck loading or wagon loading, were totally closed for 2 days.
Some emergency services of the coal industry had been kept out of the hartal but even in these cases the management had to first get the permission of the striking workers. This was the scenario throughout the entire coal belt of Jharkhand. All attempts to break the hartal by influencing sections of the striking workers through TMC in Bengal, JMM, Dadai group (INTUC), AJASU etc in Jharkhand proved unsuccessful and the workers refused to go to work. Another unique feature of the hartal was the solidarity shown by the local rural people with the coal workers.
The ruling parties as well as the media tried propaganda to break the hartal—claiming that only 4 days’ coal was left in the power houses and the entire country would be plunged into darkness due to the hartal. The Congress backed Dadai group in Bermo coal belt, AJASU in Ramgarh coal belt, and JMM in other areas of CCL tried to break the hartal by use of force but the CMW opposed them strongly and kept the hartal unbroken.
An additional achievement of the hartal is that during the negotiations the coal minister was forced to give in writing that CIL would not be privatized. It was also decided during the negotiations that a review committee would be formed to review the terms and conditions of 42 coal block allocations, and this review committee would include trade union representatives.
The striking workers submitted a 10 point list of demands including stopping of privatization of CIL, scrapping the coal block auction ordinance, guarantee of security of jobs of all workers in CIL, and stopping of dissolution of CIL in the name of reorganization.
