TUs gear for all-India strike

Senior Communist Party of India leader and All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) general secretary Gurudas Dasgupta has termed the joint strike call by the trade unions on February 28 as the biggest show of unity by the working class and the poor.

All the leading trade unions, including the INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress), affiliated to the Congress, and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh of the Bharatiya Janata Party, besides the Left unions — the CITU (Centre for Indian Trade Unions) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) — will participate in the strike.

“It is not these unions alone. The Shiv Sena's trade union in Maharashtra and the Muslim League-affiliated trade union in Kerala too have extended their support to the strike call. Besides the national level organisations, hundreds of unaffiliated unions and local unions are going on strike, which could be termed the biggest in the recent times,” Mr. Dasgupta said.

Mr. Dasgupta was in the Rajasthan capital on Friday along with Sanjeev Reddy, MP and president of INTUC; B.N. Roy, general secretary of BMS; and Tapan Sen, MP and general secretary of CITU, to mobilise the cadres and workers for the strike.

“This is perhaps for the first time the leaders of major trade unions are travelling together all over the country in the run-up to the strike,” Mr. Dasgupta noted. “We have kept the strike outside the purview of politics for the sake of trade union unity.”

The union leaders have so far toured Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Thanks to "THE HINDU"