The day after the chief executive officer of a jute mill in Bengal was brutally killed by agitating workers, the blame game started with chief minister Mamata Banerjee holding trade unions affiliated to the Left and the BJP responsible even as the workers saw it coming as the jute, ironically called the golden fiber, continues to rapidly lose government orders.
Mamata made a statement in the state Assembly that CITU and BJP are the only two political parties whose affiliated unions existed in the Northbrook Jute Co Ltd, whose CEO Har Kishen Maheswari was lynched on Sunday indicating that her party's trade union body INTTUC has no role to play.
"The CPI(M) and the BJP have instigated this pre-planned conspiracy. We feel they are trying to disturb peace in Bengal and stop development process. We will not tolerate this," Partha Chatterjee, state parliamentary affairs minister said.
The workers, on their part, blamed government apathy in making efforts to support the industry creating a situation made worse by emergence of a section of industrialists who are called contractors and are indifferent to long term sustainability.
"It was a question of survival for us and not any political interference that lead to the incident. We weren't surprised by what happened," said a worker of Northbrook.
The 69-year-old CEO, a veteran of the industry, made a cardinal mistake of trying to pacify a group of workers who were asked to think over a proposal to cut down on working days or daily shifts due to almost zero order book.
Police on Monday arrested six workers of the jute mill while the company put up a suspension of work notice during the day citing labour unrest.
More arrests are expected as the First Information Report mentions 12 persons, Superintendent of Police Sunil Chowdhury said.
Even the industry has been apprehensive of such an incident, said Indian Jute Mills Association chairman Raghavendra Gupta.
"This ghastly incident is the culmination of what we have been writing to the West Bengal government during the last six months. The cutting back on production in the last 5 months have rendered thousands of workers jobless and we have repeatedly stated in our letters that this will result in deterioration of the law and order problem. As a result there is simmering discontent in several jute mills regarding normalization of production. Without the usual indent from the central government during the months of February, March, April and May, 2014 the industry has been starved of orders and most mills across the board have had to cut back production. Several mills closed down during the period and have gradually opened anticipating fresh government orders," said Gupta in a statement.
While old jute mills numbering more than 50 are governed by the provisions of the Tripartite Wage Agreement, several small unorganized jute mills emerged and changed the rule of the game by paying lower wages. Moreover, Bangladesh started flooding the market with cheap jute goods aided by 10% subsidy offered by the its government on exports as well as non payment of any customs duty by SAARC countries, he said.
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