Carry the Resistance Struggle to further height

Nationwide General Strike on May 20, 2025

Tapan Sen

 General Secretary

The Indian Working Class movement is facing  an unprecedented and challenging situation, stemming from the deepening systemic crisis of contemporary capitalism. The ruling class’s response has become increasingly aggressive and brutally authoritarian, systematically stripping people of their democratic rights to engage in collective action within the existing apparently democratic structure. This disarming of the working class, both at the workplace and national levels, has become a hallmark of the BJP-led NDA regime, which exhibits neo-fascistic characteristics.

As part of this process, the government has enacted  four Labour Codes by repealing 29 labour laws, aiming to impose conditions of virtual slavery on the working class. This move to enslave workers forms the foundation of a corporate-communal ecosystem that is being sought to be put in place in order to  perpetuate a completely authoritarian system, encompassing both economic management and societal governance.

The Labour Codes were a part of this process of engineering authoritarianism in the entire governance process. These were enacted in 2019 and 2020, but their implementation could be stalled until 2025 through sustained interventions and resistance from the working class at various levels –the workplaces, sectors, and at national level.

But the Modi-regime in its third term of governance, although with a drastically reduced majority, has become desperate in implementing the Labour Codes, targeting to notify the Codes by April 2025.

In this background, the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Sectoral Federations decided to sharply react through heightening the united struggle of resistance to such nefarious ploy of the ruling polity to impose the conditions of virtual slavery on the working people.

In that background, The National Convention of Workers held on 18th March, 2025 at New Delhi, has called for a nationwide general strike for May 20th, 2025, as part of a broader combative offensive being prepared by the united working-class movement. We have to take up the challenges head-on and make the call of countrywide General Strike a massive success demonstrating the firm resolve of the working class to defy and resist.

The Labour Codes are integral to the attempts of the corporate communal nexus in governance to suppress all opposition against neoliberalism by curbing the democratic and Constitutional rights of the people. They are meant to facilitate loot and plunder of our natural and public resources and cruel exploitation of the workers to allow profit maximisation.

For example, in the recent years, the Modi government has decriminalised 180 offences of corporates under 41 legislations including the Boiler Act, Forest Act, Tea Act, Rubber Act, several pharmaceutical sector related legislations etc, as per the provisions of the so called Jan Vishwas Act. Provision for imprisonment for violating those laws has been withdrawn confining punishment to paying some fine. 100 more offences have been decriminalised in the latest Union budget. This is nothing but a licence to violate laws including labour laws with impunity. Shram Samadhan and Shram Suvidha portals have practically done away with complaint based inspection again to facilitate undeterred labour law violations by the employers.

On the other hand, collective actions by the workers to assert their hard won rights are being criminalised. So much so that collective lodging of complaint by workers and their unions is sought to be interpreted as ‘organised crime’ under section 111 of BNS (Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita), leading to police action including non bailable imprisonment. Already in several states trade union leaders are being implicated for representing workers’ grievances to the management or even labour department. Even before the Labour Codes are implemented, routine trade union activities like gate meetings, departmental meetings, distribution of leaflets, submitting memorandum etc, particularly in Govt-establishments/departments, are being virtually prohibited. These are meant to create an atmosphere of fear among the workers.

Employment relations in the organised as well as the unorganised sectors are being restructured to promote fragile and precarious employment. This is meant not just to minimise labour costs but more importantly to weaken and eliminate trade unions. Labour Codes facilitate this process. Permanent employment will become a thing of the past being replaced by mass scale outsourcing, apprentices, trainees, interns etc. Innovative terminology is used to keep workers outside the purview of labour laws.

It is amply clear that a echo-system is being sought to be cultivated by the capitalist class in the entire governance process to facilitate implementation of Labour Codes aiming at completely disarming the workers and their collective entities in order to carry on their perverse criminality in economy management, management of the political governance and poisonous-divisive machinations on the society without any hurdles.  

Modi government has opened the public exchequer, generated through tax burden on the common people, for loot and plunder by a handful of its cronies. Schemes like production linked incentive, capex incentive, employment linked incentive etc are nothing but pipelines to drain people’s money to meet the cost of production, variable capital expenditure and labour costs of these corporates, mostly monopoly companies, with neither returns to the government nor employment generation. On the other hand, the government has cut down, in real terms, budgetary allocations for MNREGA, health, education and other welfare schemes that benefit the poor.

All these indicate a shift in the paradigm of neoliberalism towards a more rabid authoritarian model with neo-fascist orientation in view of the aggravating systemic crisis of capitalism. UAPA, PMLA, BNS along with numerous administrative and executive measures display rabid authoritarianism with fascistic intent.

It is this message that needs to be taken to the mass of the workers and prepare them to resist these attacks and defend not only their hard won rights, but the entire society and the nation from the pervert machinations of the corporate communal regime. They should be made aware that this general strike is an important part of this struggle to save our nation.

The ensuing country wide general strike should not be seen as just one of the series of general strikes by the working class of our country since the official advent of neoliberal policies. It should be understood as a beginning of a higher phase of intensified struggles of defiance and resistance to stall implementation of Labour Codes and through that process the entire authoritarian project of the ruling class. It should prepare the ground to take united struggles against neoliberalism to a higher level by the working class more conscious of its historic role in transcending capitalism.