Labour Movement and Neo-liberal Economic Order: From Dalli Rajahara to Maruti Suzuki

On the Twentieth Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Shankar Guha Niyogi and in solidarity with Workers’ Struggle at Maruti Suzuki New Socialist Initiative invites you to a discussion on:

"Labour Movement and Neo-Liberal Economic Order: Dalli Rajahara to Maruti Suzuki"

Speakers:

Shiv Kumar (Gen. Secretary, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union)

Rakhi Seghal  (New Trade Union Initiative)

Smita Gupta (Senior Fellow, Institute for Human Development)

Activity Center (Above SPIC MACAY Canteen),

Arts Faculty, DU; 2 pm, 28th September, 2011

Background Note: On 28^th September, 1991, Shankar Guha Niyogi was killed in sleep by hired killers. He was the leader of Chhatisgarh Mukti Morcha and had organized adivasi casual wage miners of Dalli Rajahara. Sessions Court convicted two local industrialists and hired killers for murdering Niyogi. Supreme Court in 2005 let off the two industrialists. Niyogi is remembered for his resolve to organize workers of the un-organised sector and for bringing in socially constructive issues to the trade union movement. CMM under him organized campaigns for women’s rights, against alcoholism, and for health services by workers’ cooperative.

Workers’ of Maruti Suzuki car plant at Manesar are fighting for their basic democratic right to have a union of their choice. Management with the open connivance of state government labour department has tried every trick in the trade, from forcing workers’ to sign blank papers, to an illegal lock out under the guise a ‘Good Conduct Bond’, to filing fake criminal charges against workers’ leaders. But workers are united and continuing with their struggle. At stake is not just the right of a section of Maruti Suzuki workers to have their own union, but rights of all workers against capitalist depredations under the current neo-liberal state.

About NSI: New Socialist Initiative (NSI) is a collective committed to the belief that humanity can create a society free of economic deprivation, gender, caste, national and racial oppressions and ecological degradation. It will be a society of associated humans which will ensure that "the free development of each (will be) the condition for the free development of all". This requires a social system run collectively for the welfare of all, as against capitalism that is run by the rich and the powerful for their private profit. While we uphold the legacy of socialist revolutions of the last century, we also believe that it is necessary to learn from their limitations and mistakes to successfully challenge new forms of political and ideological domination evolved by capitalism.