AIUTUC had its 21st All India Conference held amidst great enthusiasm from February 13-15, in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, better known as the Coal City of India.
On the first day the open session was held with more than 5000 workers and employees including 1500 delegates from 22 states of the country and different work fields participating. Comrades K Radhakrishna, President, and Sankar Saha, President and General Secretary of AIUTUC as well as R Tewary, Working President of Bihar Coal Mines Union offered garlands at the martyrs’ column after which the workers took out a rally that traversed through the entire city to reach the venue-the Kohinoor Maidan. This session was presided over by Comrade K Radhakrishna. R. Tewary, Chairman of the Welcome Commi-ttee initiated the open session.
Comrades Jahirul Islam and Masud Reja leaders of Bangladesh Workers’ and Employees’ Federation were present as fraternal foreign delegates.
Main speaker at this session Comrade Sankar Saha, General Secretary, AIUTUC, in his speech dwelt at length on the all-out attack the government is bringing on the working people in the form of adopting highly anti-working class policies of ‘hire and fire policy’, fixed-term employment’, ‘wage code’ and such other sinister labour reform measures in keeping with disastrous doctrine of globalization, liberalization and privatization. He gave a call to build up extensive workers’ movement against these. Leaders like Comrades Satyawan, Polit Bureau Member as well as Comrades Shankar Dasgupta and Rabin Samajpati, both Central Committee members, SUCI(C) also spoke. The opening session ended with the speech by Comrade K Radhakrishna, President, AIUTUC and also president of the session. .
At the delegate session, started on the same evening, the goodwill messages sent by the fraternal organizations of Cuba, Palestine, Pakistan and Nepal were read out.
On February 14, invited guests like the WFTU Deputy General Secretary and leaders of AITUC, CITU, AICCTU and UTUC, the left Central Trade Unions greeted the delegates.
In the beginning, the organizational report was placed by Comrade Sankar Saha and the main resolution was moved by Comrade Shankar Dasgupta. Resolutions were passed against the NRC-CAA-NPR and against attack on women as also attack on workers at the steel and banking industries and railways. A 20-point charter of demands including ASHA, Anganwadi, Mid-Day-Meal Scheme workers to be recognized as government employees and for allotting constitutional status to the right to work was passed following discussion. At the Conference, a new 140-member strong All India Committee was formed with Comrades Sankar Saha as the President, Shankar Dasgupta as the General Secretary and Comrades K Radhakrishna, Satyawan and other prominent AIUTUC leaders as Vice-Presidents.
Comrade Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, SUCI(C), addressed the concluding session of the delegates. He asserted that stricken with insurmountable market crisis, utterly decadent moribund corrupt capitalism is squarely passing on the entire burden of that insolvable crisis on the working class and other sections of the toiling masses. It has become so crisis-ridden today that it has brought down tremendous omslaughts through savage economic oppression and heinous political-cultural attacks. The working class and the other segments of exploited masses in all imperialist-capitalist countries are becoming increasingly wretched and pushed towards the precipice of total ruination. Moreover, the Government is fomenting all kinds of divisiveness like sectarianism-communalism-parochialism so as to wedge a divide into the struggling unity of the toiling millions. Latest attempt to exacerbate such division has been through the attempt to introduce NRC-CAA-NPR. In such a situation, Comrade Provash Ghosh gave clarion call that along with developing movements on their economic demands, the working class should join the social movements involving all sections of people with the ultimate object of overthrowing the exploitative capitalist system, the root of all evils. He specifically emphasized that the workers and employees who have joined this organization out of volition to take forward genuine working class movement along correct revolutionary line should also make all-out efforts to free themselves from the various bourgeois thoughts, fads and practices and declass themselves to be true vanguard of the revolutionary working class of India. And for that, they need to conduct an arduous but honourable life struggle covering all aspects of life based on Marxism-Leninism -Shibdas Ghosh Thought. They must equip themselves ideologically and expand as well as firm up the organization on the edifice of higher revolutionary culture and morality. In course of that, they would be able to attain nobility of character and integrate ideological struggle with organizational struggle.
The Conference ended with the rendition of the Internationale.
