full version: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, Asia's biggest Special Economic Zone is in the making. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk In the May 2009 issue you can find: 1) Proletarian Experiences - Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective *** Auto-biographic story of a 49 years old driver about his experience as a working-class Sikh in Delhi since the 1970s, his experiences as a proletarian militant in a religious organisation, the shock of the anti-Sikh riots, his disillusionments and revelations... The story was told to FMS and published in issue 247, January 2009. In FMS longer stories about the (daily) life of workers are published under the heading "Aap-Ham kya-kya karte hain", asking "So what are you-we doing". The series emphasises the need to talk about ourselves regaining a sense of importance of our experiences and make them heard - against the big noise of the public life of stars, leaders, cooperate identities... *** Math and Wrath of Misery - The workers' reports tell us about average daily wages for workers in modern industries of about 100 Rs. This short note puts this wage in a context of daily expenditures. Followed by a short impression of distributing the Faridabad Majdoor Samaachaar in Gurgaon, Udyog Vihar. *** Long list of short workers' reports about wage and working conditions in Gurgaon factories. The reports are gathered/spread during the monthly distribution of 'Faridabad Majdoor Samaachaar' (Faridabad Workers' News). The reports were gathered/spread between November 2008 and March 2009. We can see an impact of the economic slump, particularly in the automotive manufacturing sector, where shift hours have been reduced. Alankar Creation Anand Nishikawa (Maruti Suzuki supplier) Bharat Export Bharat International Campari Export Chintu Fashion Condor Dhir International (textiles for GAP) Eastern Medikit Evergreen International Femme Highfashion Garments Gaurav International (textiles for GAP) GOM Export Grafty Export Gulati Export Instyle Krishna Label Lara Exports Logwell Forge (Maruti Suzuki supplier) Mass Enterprise Mag Filter (Maruti Suzuki supplier) Mod Syrup Industries Modelama (textiles for GAP) Modern Lace House MY Fashion Omega Design Orient Clothing Pearl Global Premium Moulding and Pressing Richa and Company Richa Global Ridhima Export Radnik Export Rangi International Rolex Auto Sargam Export S&R Export Shahi Exports (Faridabad: GAP, Old Navy, Target, Spirit and Hugo Boss) Spark Viva Global Winter Wear *** Proletarian Poverty and Common Wealth Games - After a deadly work accident on the huge Common Wealth Games construction site in Delhi workers struck and destroyed company property. The accident was just the last straw - the general working-conditions are bad enough and the credit and profit squeezed construction companies (see short summary) have to pass the squeeze on to the workers. People's Union for Democratic Rights has just published a report on the conditions on the site: http://www.pudr.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179 *** Another fatal factory fire - On 1st of May 2009 the Lakhani shoe factory in Faridabad Sector-24 caught fire, six workers were killed, 30 more were injured severely. According to workers, a blast in the boiler next to the basement of the two-storey factory caused the fire. The police claim that the factory owner has disappeared. 2) Collective Action - Reports on proletarian struggles in the area *** Tecumseh Workers' Report about re-structuring process and workers' resistance at Tecumseh compressor manufacturing factory, formerly belonging to the multi-national Whirlpool. 3) According to Plan - General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies *** Real Estate of Crisis in Gurgaon - Short summary about current real estate crisis in Gurgaon. The gold rush is over, the makers of neo-liberal bubble-town Gurgaon leave behind concrete-steel skeletons, tomb-stones of their unfinished business. *** Security Fears - Private-Public Re-armament in Gurgaon. One of the main real estate developers DLF now ventures into the boom sector of crisis, profiting from the post-Mumbai-attack upper-middle-class paranoia: in Gurgaon DLF sets up a training camp for it's Terra Force, a security company based on low-paid labour of a migrant-peasant work-force. 4) About the Project - Updates on Gurgaon Workers News *** Glossary Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in alphabetical order. News from the Special Exploitation Zone - www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com |
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Industrial Workers of the WorldOne Big Union for All |
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Melboring calling
Here in Melbourne there are many Indians amongst the International students most of whom are casualised workers. Amidst them is is a “push” of young unionists eg taxi-drivers uprising/occupation of city intersection for 24+ hours last year after the stabbing of a fellow worker. Some of these worker students also work with UNITE which is trying to get justice for same milieu 7-Eleven workers under-paid at rates as little as $8 an hour…see http://www.unite.org.au/ Back in India itself here is a struggle on between Biz unions and Party affiliated hierarchies, outside them are the majority of wage slaves of course just like here. The “internationalist” GWN project in their own words: ” Gurgaon Workers’ News is a project independent from political parties or unions, trying to support workers’ self-organisation in their struggle for a better life. One of the projects aim is to document the development and workers’ struggles in and around Gurgaon, one of the current boom regions of global capital. For this reason we publish a monthly electronic newsletter on this site. GWS is not meant to be a purely documenting project, it is not supposed to be a one way street. We distribute a regular newsletter/leaflet amongst workers in the area which, apart from local news, contain workers` information of related industries, companies or boom regions from other places in the world. If you want to have your information distributed to workers of a specific company, see list of companies on this site, or if you would offer to do the same at your place, please get in touch. ” It is interesting that the current they reflect upon comes out of workers vs Fiat which is currently about to taker over Chrysler etc. see http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/workers-theory/ “Mirafiori goes Udyog Vihar – Material on “Operaismo”: Marxism from a Workers’ Perspective Intro: Some thoughts on the ‘revolutionary potentials’ in Delhi’s industrial south Mirafiori used to be FIATs biggest car factory in Italy, employing over 80,000 workers in the 1960s. In 1969 the factory was occupied by the workers, it became a focus for social unrest, a meeting point for young student groups, a reference point for other workers’ struggles at the time. Italy was at the brink of social revolution. Some smaller groups consisting of workers, CPI dissidents and other activists ‘re-read’ Marx and questioned the official interpretation of the CPI. Their current was denounced as ‘Operaismo’, ‘Workerism’. “