Privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills: Steel Workers Must Fight With Iron Courage!

We Shall Fight and We Shall Win! 

Amidst the devastation and destruction caused by last month’s earthquake, the Musharraf regime is preparing to launch further attacks on the rights and conditions of the working class.

Privatisation is the latest and most dreadful tool of the ruling class, used to subject millions of people to poverty and unemployment. In many countries, governments and bosses have attempted to associate privatisation with prosperity. This lie has been exposed. Privatisation always and everywhere leads to a worsening of living and working conditions. It will be the same for the working class of Pakistan. Thanks to such economic policies, unemployment and the price of goods are at an all time high.

The bosses have already privatised the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation and the Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation. The conditions of these institutions after privatisation are well known to all of us.

The bosses have now put Pakistan Steel in their sights for privatisation, which they plan to do by December 3, 2005. If they succeed, they will have forced thousands of workers and their entire families into a life of misery, poverty, uncertainty and hunger. However, like the workers of the other privatised institutions, the workers of Pakistan Steel will not accept this. Pakistan Steel pays Rs 10 million a day in the taxes. Yet the workers generated Rs 605 billion in profit in last financial year. Pakistan Steel has become the basis of industrial development for the entire country, and provides jobs for tens of thousands of skilled workers. The bosses cannot wait to plunder the wealth that company represents.

The advocates of privatisation are spreading lies about the benefits of privatisation. They claim that the workers will receive better salaries and better benefits packages. One only has to look at the other privatised companies to see that this is contrary to the facts. If Pakistan steel is privatised there will be no job security, making the fuss about better benefits packages meaningless.

The bosses are only after one thing: to make the maximum amount of profits anyway they can. The living and working conditions of the working class, as well as their well being, are of no concern to the bosses.

The workers of Pakistan Steel are not cowards, nor are they weak. They have always fought courageously whenever their interests were at risk. The workers have daringly resisted the official brutality of the state, whether from General Shuja or from the now notorious Colonel Afzaal, and forced the administration to accept their demands. This now forms part of the traditions of the workers of Pakistan Steel.

Some of the trade union leaders are making rounds of the steel mill along with the chairman of the company in an attempt to convince the workers that privatisation will bring benefits. These people are forgetting history and ignoring the mood of the workers.

The workers demand that their leadership struggle for the interests of those who elected them, and that they must break with the bosses. They must join the struggle of the workers in defence of their rights, their jobs, and their livelihood. The working class never begged or pleaded for these rights, but have won them in struggle. The Marxists in Pakistan stand in solidarity with the workers of Pakistan Steel. We will fight alongside them in the plant, and we will take this struggle to every corner of the country and to parliament.

The president of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign, and Member of the National Assembly, Manzoor Ahmed has been fighting for worker’s rights on the floor of the National Assembly. He fought against the Industrial Relations Ordinance and other privatisation and he will fight against the privatisation of Pakistan Steel.

We workers are committed to fighting against privatisation until the final victory. We declare our whole-hearted support and solidarity with the workers of Pakistan Steel. A national meeting is being called to launch the “Save Pakistan Steel” campaign in which workers and trade unionists from institutions from across Pakistan, including Pakistan Steel, will attend and where will draw up a strategy for a joint struggle against privatisation.