Attention:
General Secretary, WFTU secretariat@wftucentral.org
Women’s Committee women@wftucentral.org
Asia Pacific Regional Office wftuasiapacific@gmail.com; c.srikumaraidef@gmail.com

Subject:
Complaint against CITU and AITUC (Kerala, India) for their sexist remarks and non-cooperation with
KAHWA women workers in violation of WFTU Constitution

Reference (WFTU Constitution):

II Objective

for the elimination of racism, sexism and any other forms of discrimination
III Means
b) utilize the rich militant experience of struggles of the working class; organize international action
days, demonstrations, mobilizations, marches, strikes and any other form of action
Article 14 Regional Trade Union Activities
The representation of the regions within the WFTU leading bodies is set forth in articles 2, 3 (lII.a), 4
(e), 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. They have the following principal tasks:

to organise and stimulate consultations and exchanges of experience amongst the member trade
union organisations of the continent;

to take any initiatives for solidarity action and for the realisation of the demands of the workers of the
continent;

Complaint against:

Elamaram Kareem, CPI(M) leader and former Kerala minister Elamaram Kareem, CITU
Kerala

PB Harsha Kumar, CITU Kerala State Vice President

KN Gopinath, CITU Kerala State Secretary

PP Prema, General Secretary of the ASHA Workers Federation, CITU Kerala

Reference (Statements):

‘The strike is anarchist and laughable’

‘S Mini is a pest spreading infectious disease’

‘You will lose jobs if you continue protest’

‘Protesters could be kissing the Union Minister’

Humiliation – CITU

AWFFI – CITU

21 May 2025

Complaint:

We wish to bring your attention to the atrocious behaviour of CITU leaders in Kerala, India towards a group of women community health workers, commonly known as the ASHAs (Accredited Social
Health Activists), who have been on strike against the government of Kerala since 10 February 2025. These workers belong to a minority union known as KAHWA (Kerala ASHA Health Workers
Association), who have been part of several protests and struggles alongside the CITU-affiliated ASHA workers union in the state for several years now.

We are writing this as a complaint, deliberately, because the WFTU Constitution explicitly rejects sexism. We urge WFTU to conduct an independent inquiry into this complaint at the soonest for
ensuring justice to the women workers. We expect a full and sincere apology as a public statement addressed to the KAHWA, from the erring male leaders for the sexual and non-sexual, but clearly sexist insults they aimed at the KAHWA workers, bringing further harm to their reputation and freedom of association.

We make this complaint because the government of Kerala and the leading political party in it, the CPI(M), has added insult to injury by first manipulating the ‘talks’ they initiated with the striking workers, and then shut the door for conciliation in their faces. The strike is past its
hundredth day, and yet the government has failed to resolve the issue. Their continuous portrayal of the KAHWA and the striking women workers as either malign forces or as lacking in agency in the
past months seems to be the basis on which the government justifies its shocking neglect of the issues raised, and its passive violence against striking women workers. The CITU is closely aligned with the ruling government of Kerala, the Left Democratic Front, led by the
Communist Party of India (Marxist). The KAHWA strike which is directed at the ruling government for an honorarium that matches the minimum wage, has been read as a hostile act, with the intention of
harming the government of Kerala, and the CITU, to which the majority union of the ASHAs is affiliated, has had no qualms at all in attacking the striking women workers with egregiously sexist insults from the very beginning of the strike. The statements made by senior CITU leaders, men who are in responsible positions in the union, insulted the KAHWA leaders, calling them schemers and ‘pests’. Sexually-coloured insults were made publicly by a state-level leader, and all of these were
circulated widely through social media. But most importantly, the CITU, including its senior women leaders like A R Sindhu, have been persistent in building a hugely patriarchal discourse about the striking women workers of a minority union – which asserts that these workers are incapable of building unions, assessing the political conditions, and organizing strikes on their own. They have made public statements multiple times that these workers are being ‘misled’ and that they have
succumbed to ‘anarchist forces’, all of which portray the striking women workers as devoid of agency, as passive sheep led astray by dangerous forces. These persistent attacks on this highly-disempowered section of women care workers triggered a public outrage in Kerala. Over the past three months, the CITU in Kerala has received widespread condemnation from progressive civil society, including organisations and individuals close to the 21 May 2025ruling LDF government. These criticisms seem to have had some impact – such public statements
seem to be now less frequent. However, these kinds of attacks have not ceased. Far from stopping, they seem to be traveling quite smoothly through the social media to demean and distort the strike and the women workers participating in it. The CITU’s response to civil society outrage, too, has been an effort to side-step the issue. In a statement issued by A R Sindhu of the ASHA Workers and Facilitators Federation of India on 3 March, a response was attempted. The response was as follows:

The statement [signed by a large group of intellectuals and prominent members of civil society] rather alleges that “CITU trade union leaders are indulging in insult and ridicule” (also WCD/Health and Finance Ministers). We would like to make it clear CITU’s comment or statement on this strike came only as the reaction to the allegation by the striking union that the minister was ‘giving credit to the success of the strike to CITU union’ CITU union is ‘betraying the interest of ASHA workers’ etc. It is only after these allegations were widely publicized by the entire right wing media that the CITU leadership responded.

This response seems to completely evade the shocking sexism in the statements of such important CITU leaders such as Elamaram Kareem, P B Harshakumar, and K N Gopinath, who worked as dog-whistles to the CPI(M) troll army on social media. Instead of condemning the clearly-sexist and misogynist comments, A R Sindhu tries to bypass them, focusing instead on the CITU’s statement. The minority union does believe that the CITU’s reluctance to acknowledge the state government’s share of responsibility – especially as a government led by leftist parties – is indefensible. We arebaffled how this position allowed the CITU leadership and its ranks to indulge in attacks that directly targeted the striking women workers’ dignity (for example, asking if a sitting MP, a member of the Hindu majoritarian BJP party, ‘kissed’ the women workers he visited – in a context in which the act of kissing is still widely perceived as a clearly sexual act). Far from being limited to the ‘right-wing media’, the outrage was actually propelled into action, through petitions and other public actions, by progressive civil social groups, individuals, especially, the leading independent left intellectuals and feminists in the state. In a striking response, citizens in the district of Thrissur mobilized to make top-up payments to ASHA workers, whose daily wage of INR 232 (2.7 USD) is not sufficient for even survival, especially when their workloads have been increased by the Department of Health in Kerala, and now stretch to 12-16 hours a day. These actions were not led by right-wingers; it was inaugurated by the well-known performance artist Mallika Sarabhai who is indeed a fellow-traveler of the Kerala left. As feminists working in Kerala and researchers who have worked on issues pertaining to gender and labour in the state, we are deeply disturbed by the ways in which the CITU and its supporters in
the mainstream communist party ecosystem in the state are working overtime to normalise the denigration of women workers who take decisions about trade union work outside the mainstream, majority unions.

Signed by:

J Devika, Feminist Scholar, Kerala.

Shradha S, Civil Society Observer, Kerala.
21 May 2025