Auto component manufacturer Pricol Ltd claims that its OE customers have warned it that “if the company ‘engages with a Communist union, we won’t have confidence that your labour relationship would be good in the long term’”. The management is “ready for talks with workers” but not with their communist union in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu). Don’t think this can happen only in the McCarthyist US. The union continues to resist the use of non-permanent workers in works meant for permanent ones without giving them equal benefits.
Now after the Indian State’s banning of the CPI(Maoist), the management has found a new justfication. In one of its official press releases it unabashedly boasts:
“The management has adopted a stand in principle not to recognise the Maoist – Leninist outfit. The recent ban by the Centre on Maoist outfits justifies our stand as our own actions were based on upholding the peace and harmony of the society as a whole.”
Interestingly, the union is affiliated to the country’s one of the few official recognised national trade union centres, All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), which is linked with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation, not the Maoists. The CPI(ML)-Liberation is one of the prominent groups that claim the legacy of Naxalism, but has long been engaged in parliamentary politics and is duly recognised by the Election Commission of India.
Radical Notes 
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