Over two days—Jan. 8 and 9—more than 160 million workers went on strike in India. This has been one of the largest general strikes in the world. The workers, exhausted by almost three decades of neoliberal policies and by the attack on their rights, came onto the streets to make their case for better livelihoods and workplace democracy. Blockades on train tracks and on national highways closed down sections of the country.
In Bengaluru, information technology workers joined the strike. In Himachal Pradesh workers gathered to demand an end to precarious employment in government service. Workers from a broad range of sectors, from manufacturing to health care, joined the strike. There has been no response from the government. Please read my report on the strike.
My report is written from Kerala, where almost the entire workforce went on strike. This strike comes after the powerful Women’s Wall that was built on Jan. 1. For a fuller sense of what brought 5.5 million women to form a wall along Kerala, see my report. The title for this newsletter comes from a well-known poem by the late radical poet Vayalar Ramavarma (1928-1975). When workers struggle, Vayalar wrote, “isn’t it something to make the land proud?”
Morocco, Sudan, Nigeria and Los Angeles
This two-day strike comes as workers around the world greeted 2019 with a wave of demonstrations—from the “month of anger” launched in Morocco by trade unions, to the protests in Sudan over rising prices; from teachers’ strike in Los Angeles, to the potential general strike in Nigeria over wages. An International Trade Union Confederation report from last year showed that ‘More countries are excluding workers from labour laws’ – 65% of countries, at last count, excluding migrant workers and public sector employees and others from the rights afforded to them. There is every indication that the attack on workers’ rights and workplace democracy will continue despite the unrest amongst workers.
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