A Strike Struck Down

A Strike Struck Down IN less than forty-eight hours the strike of the workers of the Calcutta State Transport Corporation collapsed, and nobody seems to know why. The unions were indeed assorted. The tendency to' blame the Left CPI for all our troubles persists. What is of much greater interest is whether the failure of the bus workers' strike represents a general trend in which event Prafulla Sen and Atulya Ghosh would be fully justified in their present careless crowing. The teachers got little out of their protracted strike; what they got came some time after the strike had been called off, virtually unconditionally. Last week the Chief Minister announced substantial concessions for State Government employees; but these were in the nature of Christmas gifts from a Santa Claus called Sen, not things extracted from a heartless master under irresistible pressure. This is equally true of an earlier settlement between cinema workers and their employers and the agreement between the workers and the management of a newspaper.