In the last 50 years, Chennai has witnessed two major strikes by teachers. On both occasions, students suffered and educational institutions were shut down for several weeks, and it took court verdicts on both occasions to restore normalcy.
Both agitations also began in July. The strike in 1985 gathered steam and reached its peak in November but the 2003 agitation was resolved within a month. V. Annamalai, a member of the All India Federation of Elementary Teachers’ Organisation, who was part of the 1985 protest, recalled that the teachers fervently participated in it. At least four teachers died during the protests which lasted for months. The Hindu recorded the death of one protester in jail.
In July 1985, a group of elementary school teachers struck work for six days over grievances in the implementation of the 4th Pay Commission recommendations. The next week, secondary school teachers joined the protest. They declared that September 5, celebrated nationally as Teacher’s Day, would be a ‘Mourning Day’ in the State. Government college teachers followed up with a token strike a day later. Teachers struck work for two days again. On September 18, teachers’ organisations demanded that the government redress their grievances.
The support of Opposition parties fuelled the protest. On November 3, teachers set fire to a Government Order on pay commission recommendations and implementation, which escalated, leading to the arrest of several teachers.
A long list of demands
The teachers’ charter of demands included 60 items such as bonus, medical allowance, leave travel facility, abolition of professional tax, central rates of dearness allowance (DA), incentive allowance and house rent allowance in villages, increase in the number of earned leave, separate pay scales for primary school heads, and loans for housing and children’s education. The charter wanted the government to withdraw its order and treat the absence of the striking teachers as leave without pay.
The State government pointed out that the teachers had not shown commitment to accountability. The protest continued to escalate, and by November 21, demonstrations erupted in many districts. The Opposition assured support to the protesters. On November 22, when teachers demonstrated in front of the Secretariat in the city, 227 teachers, including 14 women, were arrested.
The next day, sloganeering protesters with placards took out a procession from Anna Statue on Anna Salai, urging the government to redress the grievances at the earliest. “The procession was headed by a couple with an infant in their arms. They were followed by a lengthy vanguard of women. At the end of the procession, the demonstrators squatted on the road and on the pavement outside Ezhilagam,” a report in The Hindu stated.
The Joint Council of Service Associations and Teachers’ Organisations of Tamil Nadu announced mass rallies on November 25 across the State in support of the teachers’ demands besides picketing the Secretariat for four days. Protests were held in Thanjavur, Madurai, Tiruchi, and Coimbatore.
On November 24, the State government issued an advertisement explaining the payout to teachers. It said the State had the highest employment level and the number of government servants, including teachers, per 1,000 population was the highest among the States. It further said of the ₹450 crore allocated for education, the State spent ₹352 crore (80%) on teachers’ salaries. “Further escalation would only burden the common man,” it said. Also, the government had conceded 88 of the demands in the past three years, it added.
When the Joint Action Council of the Tamil Nadu Teachers and Employees Associations (JACTTEA) refused to participate in an official-level talk, Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran termed the strike “politically motivated” and said: “Let them not participate.”
At a function in Coimbatore, Harijan Welfare Minister A. Arunachalam remarked that private school teachers were paid less than half the salary of government teachers but it had no salutary effect. On November 25, on the intervention of the Madras High Court, the teachers suspended the strike for two days and, a day later, agreed to participate in the talks, but the stalemate continued.
When the government decided to recruit retired teachers, the agitators sought the court’s help. It called for a give-and-take between the government and teachers. On December 13, the teachers withdrew their protest. The government constituted a one-man commission to examine the teachers’ demands, and after nearly 45 days of protests, the teachers returned to work on December 14.
The 2003 agitation
In 2003, during Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s regime, government employees struck work for over a fortnight, demanding the restoration of benefits such as bonus, encashment of earned leave, payment of arrears and gratuity in full in cash, and dearness allowance on a par with Central government employees.
The Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisation and Government Employees Organisation (JACTTO-GEO) launched a strike on July 2. On June 30, the government had arrested several office-bearers of the various unions in the hope of preventing a strike.
Government employees, including teachers, struck work, forcing schools and colleges to shut down. The attendance on July 1 in the State government’s office was just 12%. The Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers’ Association and the Association of University Teachers claimed near total participation by aided and government institutions. Evaluation of postgraduate answer scripts were not taken up, they said. Jayalalithaa decided to dismiss nearly 1.7 lakh employees through an Ordinance and announced the recruitment of 15,000 temporary assistants.
The employees’ unions appealed to the Madras High Court, which on July 11, ordered the release of the arrested staff and directed the aggrieved to approach the State Administrative Tribunal. The Bench said it did not observe “any infraction of fundamental right” under Article 20 of the Constitution in the Ordinance. The court’s refusal to intervene with the government’s decision drew flak from certain sections of the media.
Escalation to Supreme Court
The employees were dismissed under the Tamil Nadu Essential Services Maintenance Act. The aggrieved petitioners took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled on July 21 that the State government should reinstate the employees gracefully. The Supreme Court, on August 6, said government employees had no “fundamental, legal, moral, or equitable right” to go on a strike even for a just cause.
