The strike of 1,500 militants, mostly young workers, against a transnational Ford Motor Company plan to close its assembly plant on the outskirts of Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was pressured and betrayed by the Chennai Ford Workers Union. (CFEU).
Working in collusion with Ford management and the DMK Tamil Nadu government, the CFEU ended a five-week strike on July 2, without discussion with the strikers and without a vote.
In the agreement reached with Ford on the back of the workers, the union actually dropped the workers’ demands for job security. Underscoring its opposition to the workers’ struggle, the union agreed for Ford to cut severance pay for any workers who strike or disrupt production at the plant before a planned final shutdown at the end of the month.
Although unions bowed to the company’s demands, Ford did not relaunch a second factory shift, meaning 1,300 of the 2,638 full-time workers are now out of work and without pay. Ford is expected to keep production to one shift until it stops on July 31. This would allow him to remain out of the factory, until its closure, the large number of younger and more militant workers who launched the strike on May 30, regardless of the CFEU.
In the months immediately following the closing last September, Ford laid off a thousand contract workers from the assembly plant. If the additional parts factory workers are taken into account, the factory shutdown is expected to result in the loss of around 40,000 jobs, most of them in the Sriperumbudur industrial area, near Chennai.
However, the unions, including those led by the Stalinists and Maoists, who had a significant presence in Tamil Nadu, did not organize a struggle against the closure of the Ford plant and did not seek to unite Ford workers with their class. brother at the supplier factory.
Similarly, the Stalinist-led union federation, CITU and AITUC, did nothing to mobilize workers in support of the strike at the Ford plant in India, thus facilitating the CFEU’s efforts to isolate and end the strike.
Ford workers at the Chennai plant have shown great militancy, repeatedly defying threats from management and the police. Faced with a fait accompaniment, the CFEU agreed to a strike, but from the outset refused to increase workers’ demands for job security, content to urge management to give them a few more crumbs as severance pay.
The CFEU continued to try to isolate the strike, discouraged the workers and finally ended the strike by signing a management order dictated in the form of an agreement reached before the Deputy Commissioner of Manpower in Chennai. After signing the agreement without consulting the striking workers, the CFEU did not even discuss it democratically and a vote by the workers and simply ordered them to return to work. The agreement says that for workers who continue to protest, their severance pay will be reduced to the original offer of a base salary of 87 days per year worked, and also says unions have sided with the labor commissioner’s opinion to avoid any protests. or strike sitting until the end of production.
Contrary to union claims that management agreed to increase the severance pay from an offer of 115 days later to 121 days of base salary per year worked, the agreement said there was nothing concrete about the severance pay. This simply indicates that the appropriate severance package will be decided later in joint discussions between management and the union. The agreement also doesn’t say anything about management’s previous offer to continue with its current health insurance until March 2024.
While the workers are demanding job security, as this is their only means of subsistence, management, with the help of the unions, is now pressuring the workers to resume production to finish the remaining cars and accept the proposed deal. The steps taken by the management of Ford India to crush the strike of militant youth workers who fought for more than a month and completely stop the production of cars were made possible only thanks to the betrayal of the unions, which isolated the militant actions of the workers. This included not only the officially recognized CFEU at the Ford plant in Chennai, but also the complete silence of the Stalinist-led trade union federation – Center for Trade Unions of India (CITU) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), as well as the LTUC (Congress of Trade Unions). Left) Maoist-led – which has a significant presence, particularly in the Sriperumbudur Maraimalai Nagar industrial area. Affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and Communist Party of India (CPI) respectively, CITU and AITUC have many members in Tamil Nadu as well as across India, including in auxiliary industries and Ford plant suppliers in India.
This proves once again the warning issued by the WSWS during the strike against the role of trade unions in the era of globalized production. On June 28, during an online meeting with striking Ford workers in Chennai who wanted to form a rank committee, Jerry White, editor for the workers’ struggle at WSWS, explained the international significance of the workers’ struggle. Chennai and pointed out that Ford also threatened to close its plant in Saarlouis, Germany. Unions such as IG Metall oppose any real struggle to maintain the jobs, living standards and working conditions of the more than 5,000 workers in the factory, thereby ensuring the orderly liquidation of production. He points out that allies of Ford Chennai and Ford Saarlouis workers are workers around the world who are resisting corporate and government attacks everywhere. They could only keep their jobs through rebellion against Ford co-managers in the union bureaucracy by independently organizing and establishing international cooperation through rank-and-file committees, thus creating a united front of Ford workers. in Valencia (Spain), Cologne (Germany), Craiova (Romania), Turkey, USA, etc.
Saman Gunadasa, deputy secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka, describes how Sri Lankan workers paralyzed large parts of the country in general strikes on April 28, May 6 and May 10, demanding the resignation of the Rajapakse government. He pointed specifically to the criminal role of trade unions, arguing that they prevented the working class from mobilizing its industrial and political power and developing it into a challenge to capitalist rule. He then underlined the urgent need to break away from political control and pro-capitalist trade union organizations and to establish rank-and-file committees as real organizations of the working class struggle.
Ramesh, who took part in this important meeting, later commented on the union’s betrayal of the strike: “I only learned a few hours later, through my colleague, that the strike had been called off by the syndicate. The union never asked our opinion on the agreement signed with management. . There is no discussion of canceling the strike. These steps were taken arbitrarily by the union leaders themselves. Your analysis [WSWS] completely justified. Trade unions, management and government are acting together against the interests of workers and deceiving us.”
Ram, a regular worker, said: “The majority of workers are still demanding job security. It was our guild saying it was a useless and unexecutable request. But now, to return to production, he is trying to convince workers that those who still ask for work can take legal action through the courts once the production target is reached, after July 31. It is clear that the union leadership is acting on behalf of management.”
“I agree that it is necessary to unite with Ford workers in Germany, Spain and other countries, decide on unions to challenge the Ford company.”
Workers, whether in India, Germany, Spain or elsewhere in the world, must learn from past years. Ford workers can only win their rights by joining international workers through a network of militant action committees and to fight against the capitalists, to bring their company into public ownership and reorganize the world economy on the basis of a socialist program that prioritizes social needs over private gain. We therefore urge Ford workers around the world to form their own rank and file committees and join the International Workers’ Alliance of Ranks and File Committees (IWA-RFC), independently of traitor unions, to protect jobs and conditions. work.
(Article published in English on July 8, 2022)
