In a fiercely contested trade union election, an AICCTU supported panel of PGI Safayi Karamchari Contract Workers Union has won with a margin of 356 votes, securing 684 in the elections held on August 17th at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh (PGIMER).

This has undone the damage done to the workers’ cause by the RSS-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) during the run up to Modi’s 2019 election. Com. Rinku Bhagat was elected as the President, whereas Com. Kavinder Kalyan was elected as the General Secretary, and Comrades Sonu, Seetu, Jitender, Monu, Sunil, Pradeep were elected as office bearers by the union workers.

PGIMER is a premier health and research institute cum hospital in Chandigarh. It employed contractual workers in 1996 and slowly extended this contingent to almost all kinds of job profiles excepting the doctors, nursing technical and admin staff. AICCTU started working in PGI when the newly formed union of the contractual staff joined hands with us in 2010.

A little before the 2019 General Elections, the BMS made in-roads into the union through a network of corruption involving some union leaders, the management of the contractor and a permanent employees leader who was associated with BJP. They ran a payment-for-placement nexus and always obstructed the efforts by the workers to formalise the muster rolls by the principal employer. They subverted the union from a workers’ rights body to management appeasing entity.

AICCTU congratulates the workers for overthrowing the Sangh-backed BMS’s plans to dilute the struggle for the rights of the working class.