Workers of Voltas, under the banner of the All-India Voltas Employees Federation limited, demonstrated for their rights at Parliament on 26th September. Voltas workers have been waging the struggle since the past 15 years, against the practice of not hiring permanent workers and against the contract system.
Workers of Voltas, under the banner of the All-India Voltas Employees Federation limited, demonstrated for their rights at Parliament on 26th September. Voltas workers have been waging the struggle since the past 15 years, against the practice of not hiring permanent workers and against the contract system.
Com.Prakash Rao, spokesperson of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, joined the demonstration and expressed the Party’s solidarity with their struggle. Besides the CGPI, Lok Raj Sangathan participated in the action with the workers of Voltas.
Voltas Limited is a company of the Tata Group, known for its air-conditioning and engineering services. Workers have not been made permanent since 15 years, and they have been on a hunger strike for 142 days at the Chinchpokli factory of Voltas at Mumbai on this issue. Meanwhile, the management has unsuccessfully tried to use the police to threaten and remove the workers by force. The workers’ leaders have also been suspended.
Today all over the country, Indian and foreign monopolies in the service, construction, financial and other sectors employ workers as managers, on contract basis and as trainees instead of hiring them in the general category. By doing so, the capitalists deny the workers their right to organize in unions and other labour rights. This is happening blatantly in the education, railway, transport, bank and insurance sectors. The majority of the workers are highly exploited and denied their basic rights on the false claims of the company that workers are receiving huge salaries. It is known that Tata who is portrayed as a labour friendly management, has the same interests as other capitalists and is no different.
All those who sell their manual and mental labour to become part of the production process are workers, and are given a fixed wage for their labour. We must refute such capitalist definitions as contract, casual, unorganized, white collar, etc., on the basis of which they create divisions among the workers. Whether in manufacturing or in service sector, every worker has the right to organize and for labour laws to be applicable to him/her.
Com. Ramesh Nair, representative of Voltas workers who are in struggle, clarified to MEL that, earlier, one engineer had two supervisors under him and seven-eight mechanics under the supervisor. Now this proportion has reduced a lot. Workers who can join a union are being employed as management staff and disabled from union membership. Their work is the same as general category workers. In this situation, there are 600 workers who can join the union and 3000 that cannot, since they are employed as management staff. Another 8000 workers are on contract. For equal work, the capitalists maintain a differential payment of wages, between the management workers, general category workers and workers on contract. For the last three years general category workers have not even been given their bonus.