Yanam Booklet Final

Some of the previous fact findings done by Trade Union Solidarity Committee 1. Dalla (UP) Cement Factory Massacre 2. Firing on Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha Workers at Introduction Bhilai On 28th January 2012, the leading dailies of the country 3. Latur Earthquake screamed on its front pages about the incident of the death of the union 4. Gujarat Genocide leader of the Regency Ceramics Factory at Yanam, in Puducherry, following a police lathi charge and about how the enraged workers had reduced the whole factory to ashes and killed the factory manager. Stories of such incidents keep appearing infrequently in the press. They are shown as isolated occurrences by rogue workers who go berserk. But are these to be seen as isolated incidents? Or are they connected by any exterior phenomena that occur around them? Can these incidents occur without any background of history? Is there a pattern to it? Can they be summarized under some general phenomena? These are the questions that arose amongst activists, and it was to seek For Private Circulation only answers to these questions that a team of trade unionists, scientists and Suggested contribution : Rs. 10/- democratic rights activists went to Yanam and met the workers, the authorities and the ordinary people to collect the details. A team was constituted by the Trade Union Solidarity Committee of Mumbai and they visited Yanam twice – from 8th to 10th March and from 9 th to 11 th First Edition May 2012 April, 2012. For copies, contact : Trade Union Solidarity Committee The team C/O All India Blue Star Employees Federation B. Srinivasarao of New Trade Union Initiative (Karnool, AP), 6, Neekanth Apartments, Gokuldas Pasta Lane, Dadar (East), Prahlad Malwadkar of Occupational Health and Safety Centre Mumbai - 400 014. Phone : 022-24150750 (Pune), Shekhar Gyaara of Mumbai Electric Employees Union (Reliance) (Mumbai), Gopal of Centre for the Protection Civil Liberties (Chennai), Sugumar, a Trade Unionist (Chennai), Deepti Printed and published by N. Vasudevan on behalf of the Trade Gopinath of Indian Airports Employees’ Union (Mumbai). The team Union Solidarity Committee from 6, Neekanth Apartments, was actively supported and assisted by N. Vasudevan, Convenor of Gokuldas Pasta Lane, Dadar (East), Mumbai - 400 014. the Trade Union Solidarity Committee of Mumbai. The translation of the Telgu version of this report has been done by Prabhakar Macha, a writer and school teacher at Mumbai. The layout of the booklet was done by Sanober Keshwar a lecturer at Mumbai. 1 Some of the previous fact findings done by Trade Union Solidarity Committee 1. Dalla (UP) Cement Factory Massacre 2. Firing on Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha Workers at Introduction Bhilai On 28th January 2012, the leading dailies of the country 3. Latur Earthquake screamed on its front pages about the incident of the death of the union 4. Gujarat Genocide leader of the Regency Ceramics Factory at Yanam, in Puducherry, following a police lathi charge and about how the enraged workers had reduced the whole factory to ashes and killed the factory manager. Stories of such incidents keep appearing infrequently in the press. They are shown as isolated occurrences by rogue workers who go berserk. But are these to be seen as isolated incidents? Or are they connected by any exterior phenomena that occur around them? Can these incidents occur without any background of history? Is there a pattern to it? Can they be summarized under some general phenomena? These are the questions that arose amongst activists, and it was to seek For Private Circulation only answers to these questions that a team of trade unionists, scientists and Suggested contribution : Rs. 10/- democratic rights activists went to Yanam and met the workers, the authorities and the ordinary people to collect the details. A team was constituted by the Trade Union Solidarity Committee of Mumbai and they visited Yanam twice – from 8th to 10th March and from 9 th to 11 th First Edition May 2012 April, 2012. For copies, contact : Trade Union Solidarity Committee The team C/O All India Blue Star Employees Federation B. Srinivasarao of New Trade Union Initiative (Karnool, AP), 6, Neekanth Apartments, Gokuldas Pasta Lane, Dadar (East), Prahlad Malwadkar of Occupational Health and Safety Centre Mumbai - 400 014. Phone : 022-24150750 (Pune), Shekhar Gyaara of Mumbai Electric Employees Union (Reliance) (Mumbai), Gopal of Centre for the Protection Civil Liberties (Chennai), Sugumar, a Trade Unionist (Chennai), Deepti Printed and published by N. Vasudevan on behalf of the Trade Gopinath of Indian Airports Employees’ Union (Mumbai). The team Union Solidarity Committee from 6, Neekanth Apartments, was actively supported and assisted by N. Vasudevan, Convenor of Gokuldas Pasta Lane, Dadar (East), Mumbai - 400 014. the Trade Union Solidarity Committee of Mumbai. The translation of the Telgu version of this report has been done by Prabhakar Macha, a writer and school teacher at Mumbai. The layout of the booklet was done by Sanober Keshwar a lecturer at Mumbai. 1 members were in charge of all the organizing aspects of the picnic, but Murli was in charge of ensuring everyone had a good time! Murli loved children and sometimes, if he had a smoke, he always asked for a “King” brand cigarette. When he was dismissed from work in the course of the union’s struggles, he would walk, or hitch rides on vehicles to reach the factory gate everyday. For four years before the union was actually announced, Murli had been patiently and steadily uniting the workers. He was very democratic and developed team work among the workers. He led from the front and was fearless. His outstanding capacity as an organizer can be seen in the broad spectrum of people that actively FOREWORD supported the union. The Working Class will not forget the Yanam From all that we heard about him from the workers, we could see that Workers’ Saga of Struggle Murli was a true leader of the working class. Of poor peasant stock himself, he loved the workers and understood their exploitation and The period of imperialist globalisation has allowed capital, with their power. Dedicating his life to their cause, he lead creatively, the covert and overt support of governments, to launch a turning the fight into a real mass struggle, by ensuring the conscious sustained, unrelenting and brutal attack on the working class. participation of the ordinary member, which is why, when the The last few decades have seen unprecedented suppression leadership of the union was victimized the workers fought on of democratic and human rights, job losses, drop in real dauntlessly. Murli died a martyr, adding his blood to the redness of wages, and the contractualization of jobs. The stability of neo- the Union’s flag…. liberal capital is dependent on the recalibration of the rate of Long Live the Heroic Leadership of Murli Mohan! profit as a result of the persistent tendency of profit to decline. His sacrifice shall not be in vain. Expanding the rate of profit takes place principally through reduction in the rate of wages. Hence, undermining workers rights in order to lower wages is central to the strategy of neo- liberalism. th Murali’s The events leading up to 27 January 2012 at the Regency father, Ceramics factory in Yanam in Puducherry are symptomatic of mother, this. A rapidly expanding factory, tied into the global production wife and children system, employs a large number of workers overwhelmingly outside as temporaries and under the contract labour system and pays their house them less than the minimum wages. Repeated attempts by the in Yanam workers to form a democratic union of their choice, based on a fundamental right protected by the constitution, are thwarted through the collusion of the employer and the different arms of the state. When workers express their demands through 2 35 Machadi Somesh Murli Mohan Martyr of the Yanam Workers Struggle morchas, rallies, dharnas, and picketing, all perfectly established forms of public protest in a democratic society, they are physically attacked, shot at and even killed by the On the 27th January 2012, when he was killed in police, bringing out the barefaced arrangement of profit- the Police lathi-charge, at the Regency Ceramics sharing between capital and members of the polity and the factory at Yaman, Murli Mohan was 35 years old. bureaucracy. Murli, the Founder of the workers union at this factory, was born into a poor, dalit, agricultural In the case of Yanam, and in several other working class labourer’s family. His father is a daily wage labourer in struggles in the last few years, the viciousness of the attack their village, a few miles from Yanam town. Murli was the eldest of has become too much to bear and workers have returned the six children. Murli, himself, had a diploma in mechanical attack. It is only when workers return the attack that it becomes engineering, from the Kadappa College of Engineering. Before news. And the news is about the debasing of the working class joining the Regency Ceramics factory at Yanam, in the year 2007, he as those who are instinctively violent, mindless, etc. What was employed for three years as a lathe operator in a factory at Yanam and other such incidents actually signal, is that the Hyderabad. attack on the working class is becoming intolerable. When exploitation becomes too much to bear and is enforced Murli fell in love with and married his neighbor’s daughter Durga through physical repression, there is bound to be a counter- and they had three daughters and a son. Durga’s father is employed attack. When the history and background of what leads up to as a cleaner, for a daily wage of Rs.150, at the Regency Ceramics the counter-attack is not told and made known, it becomes factory.

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