After more than 160 days of relentless struggle, on January 12 the sanitation workers of Chennai, organised under UUI-LTUC–AICCTU, concluded their fight on a positive note with the DMK government agreeing to their core demands. The workers will continue to be paid directly by the Chennai Corporation, successfully defeating privatisation attempts. Minister P.K. Sekar Babu, along with Mayor R. Priya, visited the LTUC office to end the fast by offering juice to the fasting workers.

Demanding Regularisation and Against Outsourcing 

Chennai corporation is divided into 20 zones and sanitation workers are employed under National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM). The Left Trade Union Centre (LTUC, recently affiliated to AICCTU) has been working among NULM workers for years and took up their cause for minimum wages, regularisation and social dignity. 

Politically, 2024 saw the BJP government face a significant setback in the national elections. At the same time, the year saw a number of workers’ struggles from various sectors, protesting the anti-worker policies of not only the BJP as prime perpetrator, but also various other oppositional governments and private establishments who share the same crony corporate capitalist mores.

The Propaganda March of Sanitation Workers

Sanitation work is a dehumanising occupation and is one that is reserved for the Dalit community across the country. Sanitation workers are not merely individual members of this workforce out of pure choice; but members, by birth, with inerasable identity and inter-generational continuity. Most sanitation workers are women, and are victims of triple oppression, by virtue of their class, caste and gender.

May Day 2021

AICCTU cadres observed May day throughout Tamil Nadu by hoisting flags in offices, factories and localities despite the code of conduct was in force in view of counting of votes on 2nd May. The state secretary of CPI ML also wrote a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of the state to allow May day events without any hindrance. Other left parties also wrote similar letters in this connection.

While everyone is speaking about the doctors and nurses, who are most definitely working on the frontlines and whose services are, of course, laudable during this pandemic, it is necessary for us to remember the frontline workers who are often neglected – the Safai Karamcharis / Sanitation Workers, the D-Group workers in hospitals, ASHA Workers and Crematorium workers.