PGWFI Calls for Nation-wide United Strike
Sudip Dutta
THE 5th triennial conference of the Petroleum & Gas Workers’ Federation of India (PGWFI) was held on December 10-11, 2022 at Duliajan, Assam. Assam is one of the oldest oil-explored regions of the world and has more than 125 years of glorious history in the field of production, refining & marketing of natural crude oil.
PGWFI is a united federation of affiliated and independent trade unions representing the upstream, middle stream, and downstream oil PSUs. PGWFI is the biggest active democratically functioning trade union federation in the oil industry in India with international affiliations. This federation developed from incessant struggles against privatisation of the oil sector. Particularly worth mentioning, the historic three days successful strike in 2002 against the blatant attempt to privatise the marketing assets of 15,000 retail outlets of BPCL & HPCL by the then Vajpayee government.
This conference of PGWFI was hosted by the Indian Oil Workers’ Union (IOWU), a young but very important, active, and dynamic constituent of PGWFI. IOWU is the solely recognised union of the upstream field headquarter of oil India limited. It has a membership of more than 3000 workers.
The conference was attended by more than 40 established trade unions of oil industries representing the whole of India; worth mentioning the ONGC Mumbai, Silchar, Agartala & HPCL Mumbai upstream exploration centres, OIL Duliajan, Rajasthan, Delhi & Kolkata, BPCL Cochi, Mumbai refineries, HPCL Mumbai, Vizag refineries, MRPL Mangalore refineries, IOC Haldia, Digboi, Guwahati, Bongaigaon refineries, BPCL& HPCL marketing, IOC marketing, and many others. From the very beginning days, PGWFI has taken committed care and initiative to organise the contract workers of the oil sector and the overwhelming reflection was prominent in this conference. Contract worker unions representing IOC Haldia, Bongaigaon, Digboi & Guwahati refinery, IOC marketing locations covering the eastern and northeastern India, ONGC Mumbai stream, HPCL-BPCL-IOC marketing workers of Karnataka and Odisha marketing and LPG supply chain workers attended the conference. The conference was attended by 145 delegates with almost half a share from the contract workers. It actually reflects today’s reality of employment scenario in PSUs where contract workers in many cases have surpassed the permanent strength, both in number and in responsibility-command over the core production process.
The conference started with decorative flag hoisting and garlanding of the martyrs' column by Pradeep Mayekar, president of PGWFI. The conference auditorium was named in memory of Tarapada Roychoudhary and M R Narayana, two veteran leaders of PGWFI. The inaugural session was ceremonious and vibrant with the participation of more than 500 workers of OIL and other local industries. Pradeep Mayekar placed the formal greetings and welcome address to the delegates. Particularly he mentioned with utmost seriousness that the world is going through the third historic oil shock after 1973 and 1979. Europe is in a deep crisis for oil and gas. The crowned petro-dollar is trembling. In this global energy context, he called upon the oil workers of India to play their extraordinary role at the national as well as international levels to address the need of this extraordinary time.
Swadesh DevRoye, the founder general secretary of PGWFI turned down the pages of history and reminded the delegates that the petroleum workers of India under the aegis of PGWFI came together with all diversities and differences but with a clear conviction to unite and save the interests of the people of India. He reminisced that the foundation conference of PGWFI was held in the IOC, Haldia refinery premises in 2005. The ONGC workers hosted the next conference at the ONGC Mumbai facility, known as the ‘nerve of the Indian oil sector’. The third conference was organised by PGWFI constituents of West Bengal in 2013 at Kolkata and the last conference was held in 2017 in Kochi, Kerala. This heritage of diversity and spread is the beauty and strength of this federation. He appealed to the conference to uphold this practice and spirit with utmost earnestness and great hope.
General secretary, Nogen Chutia placed the report. The report with the annexed documents is a great collection of information, study, and guideline for future courses of struggle. The report mentioned the unilateral irrational intervention from the central government to dismantle the Oil PSUs; the politically motivated imposition of more than five dozen of government nominees in the oil PSU boards of directors, without having any prior experience in the petroleum sector; the forced instruction on ONGC to buy 52 per cent government equity in HPCL, for which ONGC was compelled to take loan amounting more than Rs 25,000 crore; the notorious government instruction on ONGC to take over Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Limited, a non-productive, non-profitable, loan mounted company; Handing over of 60 per cent of ONGC’s offshore fields to the foreign companies; the heinous imposition of a windfall tax on ONGC and OIL; the blatant gift-over of OIL & ONGC fields to the private parties through OALP; Disastrous 2018 decision to sell-out profit making maharatna BPCL at an abnormally through away price of Rs 50-60 thousand crore against the actual value of Rs 9 lakh crore.
The report specially discussed and focused on the most recent attack on the oil sector under the name of National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) through which the government is handing over the infrastructural assets of the oil companies to the private parties in the name of long-term lease - about 8154 km of gas pipeline, 3196 km product pipeline, two hydrogen plants, LPG pipeline, and ESG assets in a throw-away price of Rs 22,503 crore.
Thirty-one delegates participated in the discussion. For the first time, a dedicated discussion was arranged for the contract workers of oil industries in which 16 delegates from contract workers participated. The discussion culminated in a decision to hold a massive national-level convention of oil sector contract workers to frame and upgrade the future course of struggle in a more militant direction.
The conference noted with great sincerity that the attack on the energy sector workers is multi-directional and dimensional. It has to be fought with the unity and strength of the energy workers of the coal, electricity, and petroleum sector together. Prasanta N Chowdhury, general secretary, of the Electricity Employees Federation of India and international president of the trade union international (Energy) attended the conference and expressed the emergent need for unity of energy sector workers – petroleum-coal-power to march together.
The conference adopted a call for a one-day joint strike of all integrated energy sector workers together to stall the unbridled move of the central government to destroy the energy security and sovereignty of India. The call is historic in its content and will open a new horizon of resistance and defiance of strategic sector workers against this autocratic ruling dispensation.
The conference also adopted five resolutions - against labour codes and attack on ONGC, on contract workers, on pending BPCL LTS, on EPS’95, and on worker-peasant unity. It unanimously elected Pradeep Mayekar as president, Tapan Sen as working president, and Nogen Chutia as general secretary amongst the 20 office bearers and the 45 working committee members. As a part of the conference session, an educative visit to 125 years old Digboi oil field and the refinery was organised by the reception committee and the experience was thrilling and enlightening to all the delegates.
The conference concluded with a strong determined appeal to the petroleum workers to plan, prepare and strategically execute the counter-offensive against this anti-national, anti-people, anti-worker ruling dispensation. With an inspiring call, it called on the petroleum workers of India to take the lead to educate, organise and mobilise the Indian working class against this blatant nexus of government-corporate destroying India’s energy security, of present and future both.
