Addressing workers
Sashipada Banerjee was person whom the labour movements of India should bow their head to. He started publishing a journal exclusively for labourers in 1878from Kolkata, namely Bharat Sramajibi (Indian Labourers) -mwhich started expressing the labour problems for the first tmie.He also founded the Baranagar Institute in 1880, to spread primary and Hygiene education among the workers. In a parallel effort he founded the Working Mens' Mission to promote justice and spiritualism among the industrial workers. Sashipada then founded a Savings bankexclusively for workers in Kolkata.
Bengal can pride himself attainning the landmark in the history of labour movement of India. Indian Railway men joined its first strike in the month of AAApril and may, 1862 demanding an 8-hour working pattern per day. The historic May day in Chcago would takew place around quarter of a century later. In the same year bullock-cart drivers went on a histiric strike which had shaken the fabric of the then Bengali Society. The jute mills of Bengal were run like a sweet shops in those days, as it is run today. The Ghusuri Mill witnessed wild cat strikes twice in the years 1881 and 1895. In 1895 ansd in 1896, the Budge Budge Jute mill in the suburbs of Kolkata witnessed the mightiest of the labour movements in the decade.
The workers of the Burn Company,in 1905, in Howrah ceased to work and achieved a partial success. In Bengal a large number of labour organisations came into being in the second and first part of the first and second decades of twentieth century.
