Organisation and struggles

Dear comrades

The Indian working-class movement stands at a crossroads. For a decade the Central government has tried to cripple the capacity of workers to assert themselves. The same period has also opened the path for more united action of workers and farmers.

Electricity employees have the strategic potency to run — or stall — the entire system within a few hours. The historic task is to use that strength with rigour, so that other toiling sections find the confidence to come onto the street.

The conference took the constitutional aim of the federation as the measure of work: raise the level of consciousness in every tier, keep decision-making tied to the ranks, and plan the next course of struggle.

Priorities carried from the 9th Conference

Organise the non-regular workforce. They do core productive jobs. The future of striking power and collective bargaining depends on coordinated action of permanent and non-regular employees, with contract workers in the leadership of the united movement.

Carry the federation into every state and Union Territory. Special attention was fixed on the contiguous belt of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and on the North-Eastern hill states.

Integrate generation, transmission and distribution against unbundling. Unions stand in NTPC, NHPC and POWERGRID. NCCOEEE remains the joint instrument of struggle — Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh are named as milestones.

Unite electricity, coal and petroleum workers. Ninety percent of coal, 57 percent of oil refining and 51 percent of electricity generation were built and operated by PSUs. A joint route-map with AICWF and PGWFI is an adopted task.

The Centre and the organisation

The federation organises across generation, transmission and distribution — Central PSUs, State DISCOMs and private utilities — from Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala and from Meghalaya to Maharashtra.

In the period after the 9th Conference old affiliates returned: Rajasthan Vidyut Kamgar Ekta Federation, Durgapur Project Employees Union, Bharat Aluminium Employees Union and CESC Workmen’s Union. Five new affiliations: Andaman & Nicobar Islands Electricity Trade Union; HPSEB Employees’ Union; Himachal Hydro Power Project Workers Federation; Meghalaya Power Workers’ Union; Tamil Nadu Power Engineers’ Organisation.

A Centre team of five office-bearers and one Working Committee member was formed after the 9th Conference. Four regional committees were set up. Kerala and Tamil Nadu undertook to send one comrade each to strengthen the National Centre.

The Working Women Sub-Committee was formed at Chennai on 14 October 2023, with Comrade Deepa K. Rajan as All India Convenor. An eight-member pensioners’ cell was formed with Comrade S. S. Subramanian as Convenor.

The three-prong attack

First: technological change and job loss. India’s installed capacity stood at 462 GW, of which 217 GW was renewable. A thermal megawatt needs two to three workers; a solar plant can run 20 MW or more with one. Remote and unmanned substations, drone line-patrolling, SCADA and prepaid smart meters cut meter-reading, billing and maintenance jobs. Artificial intelligence will deepen that cut.

Second: privatisation in many forms. Fifty-two percent of generation capacity is already private; nearly 80 percent of future renewable projects are private. The National Monetisation Pipeline of 2021 hands even NTPC and NHPC renewable assets to private players. One-sixth of POWERGRID’s network was slated for monetisation. Chandigarh’s utility has been privatised. Large areas of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are under the same drive; Puducherry is in the pipeline. The Electricity Amendment Bills seek open access over the public network and the end of cross-subsidy.

Third: employment structure. Core jobs move to contract, fixed-term and apprentice or trainee labour that has no legal right to unionise. In many companies non-unionised executive cadres already outnumber permanent workmen three to one. Electrical accidents rose from 11,938 in 2013–14 to 13,855 in 2021–22 as vacancies stay unfilled and safety is starved.

Three pillars of resistance

Defend existing rights, fight for new rights, uphold unity. Permanent jobs for permanent work; fill vacancies; equal pay for equal work; restore the Old Pension Scheme; shorten hours as technology rises, instead of cutting jobs. In Tamil Nadu, 72,000 electricity contract workers have been regularised over fifty years. That is the demand everywhere.

A total fight against privatisation. Unite the struggles against the National Monetisation Pipeline, outsourced substations, privatised smart meters, the Electricity Amendment Bills and the sale of public DISCOMs. The fight is not only for workers; it is for public control of an essential service.

Organise to sharpen the struggle. Bring contract workers into the movement and into its leadership. Link the workplace to consumers. Two national strike dates followed from this line: 20 May 2025 against the Labour Codes, and 26 June 2025 on electricity-sector issues.