Sarwahara

An appeal to the entire working class including railway workers on occasion of the conference of All India Loco Running Staff Association (17^th-18^th Dec 2024, Patna)

Class unity of workers is the only way to mount a strong resistance against the attack on workers’ rights and privatization!

Let us be free ourselves from the category, industry and caste, religion based differences that break our unity like to forge steely unity of the entire working class and all the toiling masses against capitalist exploitation and oppression!

Editorial | Sarwahara #66 (16^th Dec 2024)

[हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिए यहां क्लिक करें]

Friends! Railways is the fourth largest rail network in the world with its huge infrastructure and a huge labour force of about 13 lakh regular and also a large number of contractual/casual employees. Owing to this huge capacity to carry passengers and goods, it has long been coveted by domestic and foreign capitalists, who are eager to make it the arena of their profiteering and plunder.

Due to this policy of favouring corporate capital through privatization, Railways has reached its worst financial position in the last decade. According to the CAG report, out of every Rs 100 earned, Railways is spending Rs 98.44, that is, Railways is saving only Rs 1.56, whereas in 2014-15 the operating ratio was 91.25% meaning that by accelerating privatization, Railways is transferring most of its profits and resources to private capitalists and causing the ruin of Railways itself and misery for the common people.

Riding the chariot of privatization the government has also put Railway safety at stake. About 1.6 lakh posts related to the operation of trains were already lying vacant. Now the maintenance of trains has also been outsourced and its stipulated time has been reduced. Reducing the maintenance time and outsourcing it is akin to playing with the lives of passengers. The jobs of lakhs of railway employees are at stake too.

The government and its many mouthpieces in the media are constantly creating an atmosphere as if the only option to save the railways from the miserable condition is privatization. The Railway Restructuring Committee and NITI Aayog had long ago suggested to hand over the non-core functions of the railways, i.e. hospitals, schools, factories, workshops etc. to the private sector. Private railway lines and trains have already started operating. The government’s intention is to give most of the work on contract so that the employees do not have to be paid even minimum wages, whats to say of other facilities.

Under the policies of capitalist neo-liberalism, a well thought out plan to increase the workload on the current railway employees and push millions of unemployed youths out on the road is underway. Railway running staff are being compelled to work for 12 hours under HOER and, in the name of festivals, celebrations, marriage season, etc it has become a common practice to impose a ban on weekly rest, holidays, sick leave etc. for all 365 days. Instead of finding out the real reasons for the recent increase in SPAD incidents (Balasore, Shahdol etc.) due to the pressure of multi-skilling, ever-increasing operational pressure and mental stress, and resolving them, the railway is trying to ‘fulfill’ its duties by making scapegoats out of loco pilots, assistant loco pilots, station master and now chief loco inspectors. Operations have increased but new recruitments have almost ceased. Posts are being abolished because railways have outsourced many functions. Outsourced workers are being made to work at very low wages, without complying with any labour law and railways want to get all its work done in this way so that it does not have to pay minimum wages as well as avoid providing all those other rights and facilities which railway workers obtained after a long arduous struggle.

In the future, rights and facilitate like medical, free rail pass, leave, pension, job security are bound to be curtailed. To understand the full scope of future ill-effects, we can look at the example of America, the Mecca of privatisation. Two years back, American railway workers had to call for a strike because they do not get even a single paid sick leave. Their demand was for only 6 paid sick leaves in a year. But the railway owning companies did not agree even to this and the government also backed the capitalists.

Intention Of The Government Is To Hand Over All Wealth Created By The Workers To The Capitalists

This current direction of railway privatization was decided in the report of the Fifth Pay Commission in 1995 itself. However, at that time, the leaders of the railway unions consented to it without any hesitation and even today, when the railways are being sold piecemeal in installments, the unions are not able to move beyond ritualism and empty slogans.

The capitalists and the government as their managing committee are privatizing the huge railway infrastructure and operational system to enable the corporate capital to extract super profits without making any substantial capital investment. But this profiteering will cause great harm to the interests of railway workers, the whole working class and the entire working masses of the country. Privatization in all sectors of the economy is resulting in accumulation of all the wealth in the hands of a few capitalists. That is, the already existing class divide and extreme social inequality is being taken to further extremes.

Will The Workers Accept This Meekly As Their Destiny?

Comrades, the working class and the railway workers have a glorious history of struggles. Along with the rights like 8-hour working day, wages, allowances, facilities, leaves and improved service conditions for themselves the working class also waged many great struggles for the democratic rights of the entire people. Not only the rights of forming organisations, holding meetings, giving speeches, protests, publishing pamphlets and newspapers, but the struggles of the working class also contributed the most to obtaining the right to vote that everyone enjoys today.

The Indian railway workers went on their first strike in 1862 and since then they have been fighting vigorously for their rights along with the entire working class. After long struggles, the colonial government was forced to grant many rights like 8-hour working day by enacting labour laws in 1943, but even then, rights like 8-hour work were denied to the railway workers by calling it ‘continuous’ work. The railway workers had to struggle hard for this, which included many strikes during the period of 1960s-70s. Only after these sacrifices did the railway workers get some rights and protection. Privatisation is a renewed ferocious attack by capital on these hard obtained rights.

Class Consciousness & The Historical Task Of The Working Class

Comrades, today’s capitalist, neo-liberal, imperialist regime has learnt and taken lessons from the difficult challenges posed by the martyrdom-filled battles of our ancestors (former railway workers) and has deployed many strategies so that the railway workers cannot pose any major challenge again. For example, a very tight system has been put in place at the systemic, structural and production level, entangled in whose net the working class itself has almost forgotten its historical task, that is, its own liberation along with liberating the entire humanity from capitalist exploitation and oppression. Today the communal, caste, linguistic, regional and category based divisions fomented by the ruling class among the workers have taken such deep roots that it has become a victim of inertia as well as aimlessness.

Instead of uniting the workers on class basis, the party, category and caste-based unions are engaged in making the capital and state’s work easier by weakening their unity and strength, sowing the seeds of serious disunity among them. Even after the serious and fatal consequences of the policies of neo-liberalism have come to the fore, many unions are still misleading the workers.

Comrades, history has taught us that we have never had any option other than struggle to gain  and defend the rights achieved through long arduous struggles. In no country of the world has any ruler or politician or a guardian angel from heaven ever brought ‘good days’ for us workers. In future also, we will have to rely only on our own strength, hard work and struggle instead of their mercy.

Only the steely unity and solidarity of railway workers, the entire working class and other toiling masses on the basis of the common collective class interests of the working class, beyond all the differences of category, industry, sector, permanent-casual-contract-outsourced workers, religion, caste, language, etc., can pave the way not only to counter the current onslaught by capital on the working class, but also to fulfill the historic task of the working class, i.e., to liberate itself and the entire humanity from capitalist exploitation and oppression.

Let us march forward on this path with all our might!
Workers of the world, unite!