Damning confirmation of the criminality of capitalist sweatshops
On March 28, 2014, a worker was killed by electrocution in one of the Orient Craft units in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon.
Damning confirmation of the criminality of capitalist sweatshops
On March 28, 2014, a worker was killed by electrocution in one of the Orient Craft units in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon. Following this incident, thousands of workers of Orient Craft and neighbouring factories came out on the streets spontaneously to protest against the death of their comrade, which they correctly attributed to negligence on the part of the management of the company. On March 29, 2014, one worker was killed and three seriously injured when a fire broke out due to an electric short circuit in a leather goods manufacturing unit located in Sector 11, Noida, near Delhi. Similarly, on April 5, 2014, two workers were electrocuted when they came in contact with a low hanging high tension (HT) line in an IT park in Turbhe, Navi Mumbai.
These deaths are only a few that have made it to the news in the past few days from among the hundreds of incidents in which workers are killed or maimed all over India every year. Deaths due to industrial “accidents” are indeed very common in India. The capitalist system ensures that the maximum profit is extracted from the labour of workers while only lip service (if at all) is paid to issues of health and safety at the workplace. The extremely callous nature of the capitalist system treats workers as commodities which are dispensable, not as human beings who should be able to earn their living in safe working conditions.
The working class has fought for the right to safe working conditions over the centuries of its existence and forced the enactment of laws to ensure these. But the enforcement and implementation of these laws is dependent again on the pressure that the workers are able to put on the state. What typically happens after precious lives are lost and families devastated in such incidents in India is that “enquiries” are conducted and in some incidents, legal cases are filed against the owners of factories and penalties or fines are levied. In most cases the capitalists who profit immensely from the labour of workers are let off and other workers belonging to the supervisory or managerial categories are prosecuted. In the aftermath of the Gurgaon incident, the police zealously prosecuted over 100 workers for coming out in protest on the streets following the death of their comrade!
The incidents of workers being killed at the workplace due to unsafe working conditions are a damning confirmation of the criminality of capitalist sweatshops. They should serve as a reminder of the necessity to replace this man-eating capitalist system by the socialist system, in which the working people own the means of production and in which the right of working people to safe working conditions is systematically ensured. Mazdoor Ekta Lehar severely condemns the capitalists and their state for continuing to kill hundreds of workers every year and calls upon the working class on the occasion of May Day 2014 to renew its efforts to overthrow this system and bring in the rule of the workers and peasants.