Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.
– (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
On July 31st, around 2,000 sanitation workers under the National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) from two zones in Chennai, zone 5 (Royapuram) and zone 6 (Thiru Vi. Ka. Nagar), were informed by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) that they had been removed from their jobs and transferred to a private entity- Ramky Group.
The workers were enraged at DMK’s betrayal given their promise to alleviate their hardships (DMK election manifesto, point no. 285). Despite working for nearly 15 years through crises like floods and the COVID-19 pandemic, with CM MK Stalin praising them as “frontline warriors”, they were terminated abruptly. Through a long struggle their monthly wage rose to ₹23,000. This will be reduced to ₹15,000 now.
In response, the workers launched a protest in front of the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) main gate, backed by Uzhaipor Urimai Iyakkam (UUI), AICCTU, and LTUC in early August. From the outset, the message of the protest was clear: “Workers vs. Privatisation”. As the protest gained momentum, it garnered widespread support in Tamil Nadu, with hundreds of students and activists standing in solidarity. Despite eight rounds of talks, the government refused the demands. The DMK and its police responded with threats and launched a malicious slander campaign on social media against the agitating workers. When the protest entered its 13th day, the fear-stricken state began to reveal its true face. On August 13th, around 11:30 pm, the government unleashed
a wave of brutality on the protest. Hundreds of police personnel were deployed, and nearly 1,000 workers and activists were illegally detained. The arrests were marked by extreme violence, police were seen pushing and beating elderly women and men, forcibly shoving them into police buses. Multiple accounts reported instances of police inappropriately touching both women and men, and several protestors fainted during the chaos. Two women activists in particular were abducted by the police and tortured in custody throughout the night. Following this, the government unleashed newer tactics to weaken the protest. Around 200 sanitation workers, backed by the DMK, held a rally expressing their gratitude to the party. Additionally, a group of sanitation workers, also organized by the DMK, met Chief Minister M.K. Stalin to thank him directly. With this, the government may hope that the workers will submit and back down, the fire has not been extinguished; it is flaring up.
This ongoing movement has exposed DMK’s posturing as a pro-worker party. It also shows how the DMK governance bends to the neoliberal models of unbridled privatisation and contractualisation of labour. Dissent too meets the same fate in Chennai as it does in Delhi. Notably, the recent Tamil Nadu State Education Policy has also broadly maintained the privatising ethos of the National Education Policy. Be it DMK or AIADMK, workers can never find an ally in them. It is only through a structural overhaul under the leadership of workers and other allied classes, that economic and social justice can be realised.
