A workers' struggle has been on for past several months in the Wazirpur industrial area in Delhi. The workers of W.C. Steel factory have been fighting a protracted struggle for ensuring their basic mandated rights and facilities as the owner of the factory continues to deny them even the minimum wages. The struggle started in January with a petition submitted to the labour minister who is yet to take any action on the matter. With the Delhi government, labourv office and courts all siding with the recalcitrant owner, the workers faced retrenchments and all kinds of threats. However, the workers, despite being thrown out, have chosen to organise themselves under the banner of AICCTU and strike back with determination. For the past few weeks, the retrenched workers along with workers from other factories in the area have been sitting on a dharna at the factory gate braving all the usual intimidatory tactics, including a court case, by the factory owner to break the struggle.

On 21 June, AICCTU organised a massive demonstration at the local Deputy Labour Commissioners office. A large number of demonstrators with significant participation of women gheraoed the DLC office protesting against the collusion of the labour department with the guilty factory owners and demanding implementation of minimum wages and other legal provisions in the industrial area. The demonstration was led by AICCTU State Secretary Com. Santosh Roy and All India General Kamgar Union General Secretary Com. VKS Gautam. Several student leaders and activists from AISA also joined the demonstration in solidarity.

Addressing the demonstration, Com. Mathura Paswan of AICCTU unit of North-West Delhi accused the Delhi govt of wilfully allowing the violations of labour laws to continue in all the industrial areas. The fact that the labour laws are so brazenly violated even in the national capital exposes the real anti-working class politics of both the Congress and BJP, who have ruled Delhi all these days only to benefit the factory owners, he added. Com. Santosh Roy said that while the Sheila Dikshit govt is draining thousands of crores to project the Commonwealth Games as a symbol of Delhis pride, the wilful denial of legal rights of the millions of workers in Delhis vast unorganised sector and their abysmal working and living conditions should indeed be a matter of Delhis shame.

The demonstration forced the DLC to ask the factory owner to come for negotiations. The factory owner, however, refused to come to the spot. In fact, while staying away from negotiations on pretext of illness, the factory owner has mobilised other factory owners in the area to speak to the leaders of the struggle. In this meeting, they said that minimum wages were not paid anywhere in Delhi and they (the owners of other factories) would not allow it to be paid in a single factory. Local MLAs from the Congress and the BJP are clearly active on behalf of the owners.

Workers have decided to continue with their dharna at the factory gate till the guilty factory owner is brought to the negotiating table, all the retrenched workers are taken back and all pending payments according to the minimum wage laws are cleared. The ongoing struggle has become a rallying point for other workers in the area, who for too long had been browbeaten into submission and denied their mandated rights by a nexus of local police, labour department and govt officials, labour courts and the factory owners.  AICCTU is determined to intensify the struggle and ensure that the unholy stranglehold of factory owners, local goons and government officials is decisively challenged by the collective unity of the workers in this industrial area.

Sanjay Sharma