India: Mass organisations stage protest demonstration against the arbitrary expulsion of hundreds of workers of Maruti Suzuki

Delhi Metro Kamgar Union:

“Efforts to buy industrial peace by covering up the real reasons for the incident

at the Maruti Suzuki will only lead to a greater unrest”

 New Delhi, August 21. Various mass organisations, unions and social activists staged a protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar today against the arbitrary expulsion of hundreds of workers Maruti Suzuki  by the management and the continued persecution of the workers. The protestors also submitted a memorandum to the union labour minister to revoke the suspension of the workers.

It is to be noted that tha Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki has opened today itself after a month long lockout. However the management has announced the expulsion of the 500 permanent workers. Also the future of more than 1500 contract workers remains uncertain. The company has threatend to terminate more workers in future.

Despite heavy rainfall since morning, large number of workers and activists coming from Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida and Gurgaon took part in the demonstration.

While strongly condemning the dictatorial decision of the Maruti Suzuki management, the speakers said that the anti-labour attitude of Haryana government and the Central government stands exposed through their support to this act of pushing the hundreds of workers and their families on the street.

The speakers mentioned that the incident of July 18 at Maruti Suzuki Manesar was not a planned act of violence but an explosion of workers’ anger against the company’s policies which had accumulated over a period of time. But the company has waged a campaign to brand the workers as a “murderous mob” and “criminals” and by puttting all the legal conventions on the back burner the police is on look out for the workers merely on the F.I.R. of one side. Nobody bothered to understand what caused the workers, who were increasing the company’s profit through their hard labour, to take the violent course.

The Marikana Mine Worker’s Massacre – a Massive Escalation in the War on the Poor

by Ayanda Kota, in the Thinking Africa: Frantz Fanon blog

8 August 2012

It’s now two days after the brutal, heartless and merciless cold blood bath of 45 Marikana mine workers by the South African Police Services. This was a massacre!  South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The amount of poverty is excessive. In every township there are shacks with no sanitation and electricity. Unemployment is hovering around 40%. Economic inequality is matched with political inequality. Everywhere activists are facing serious repression from the police and from local party structures.

Mining has been central to the history of repression in South Africa. Mining made Sandton to be Sandton and the Bantustans of the Eastern Cape to be the desolate places that they still are. Mining in South Africa also made the elites in England rich by exploiting workers in South Africa. You cannot understand why the rural Eastern Cape is poor without understanding why Sandton and the City of London are rich.

Mining has been in the news in South Africa recently. Malema, a corrupt and authoritarian demagogue who represents a faction of the BEE elite, has been demanding nationalisation. Progressive forces inside and outside of the alliance oppose Malema because he represents the most predatory faction of the elite and is looking for a massive bail out for his friends who own unprofitable mines. What we stand for is the socialisation, under workers’ control, of the mines. We also stand for reparations for the hundred years of exploitation.

Things are starting to change but not for the better. Khulubuse Zuma, the president’s nephew and Zondwa Mandela, the former president’s grandchild, and many others with close family ties to politicians have become mining tycoons overnight. China has joined the bandwagon as well, plundering our resources.

Frans Baleni, the General of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earns R105 000 a month. NUM has become a route into high office in government and even to places on the boards of the mining companies. The union is rapidly losing all credibility on the mines. It is clear that it is now co-opted into the system and is part of the structures of control. It is the police that take NUM to address the workers. Baleni’s betrayal of the workers has made him a very rich man – a rich man who condemns and tries to suppress the struggles of the poor. It is no surprise that workers are rejecting NUM, trying to build an alternative union or acting on their own without any union representing them. The workers are right to chase the NUM leaders away from their strikes.

The Marikana Mine is the richest platinum mine in the world and yet its workers live in shacks. Most of the slain workers are rock drillers, the most difficult and dangerous work in the mine. They do the most dangerous work in the mine and yet they earn only R4 000 a month. Through the blood and sweat in the mines they do not only produce wealth that is alienated from them, they also produce the fat cats, which wine and dine on naked bodies and call that sushi.

South Africa’s Lonmin Marikana mine clashes killed 34 and at least 78 people were injured!

Published on Aug 17, 2012 by antonis20032002
Uploaded by Antonis Ashiotis: http://www.facebook.com/antonisashiotis

South Africa: Metalworkers Demonstrate As Strike Season Starts

South African workers demonstrate (file photo).

Radio France Internationale (Paris)

by Jean-Jacques Cornish

5 July 2011

South Africa’s strike season has begun with thousands of engineering and metalworkers taking to the streets of the country’s main cities in support of wage demands.

Refineries were set to stop work Tuesday, with negotiations going on in other sectors.

More than 110,000 of them are out demanding a 13 per cent wage hike. Employers have countered with an offer of seven per cent.

The strike was called by the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) after wage negotiations broke down.