The Maharashtra Girni Kamgar Union, launched by the late Datta Samant, has a huge following among mill workers and is a rallying force for the common platform. The Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti that has raised its voice the loudest against surplus land sale also boasts of a sizeable membership in the mills. These two are joined by the All India Trade Union Congress-affiliate Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union which has a significant presence in the National Textile Corporation mills and the Lal Bavta Mill Mazdoor Sangh. Together, they claim a strength of nearly 60,000 workers.

The meeting at the NM Joshi Road municipal school will formalise the joining of forces. Among the demands theywill raise are scrapping the Bombay Industrial Act promised by the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition on the eve of the last Assembly election, scrapping the Development Control Rules of 1991 which allow mill land to be sold or leased under different conditions and taking workers into confidence to draw up a new textile policy. Some representatives from these unions placed these very demands before CM Narayan Rane last week in a meeting to discuss mill land sale.

Union leaders emphasise that they are not merging, merely joining hands. ``All of us will continue to have our own identities with our own support bases but we are responding to the need of the hour raise a strong common voice instead of diffused voices especially when we are all saying the same things,'' explained advocate Gayatri Singh, president of the Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti. Union leaders have had a series of meetings in the last few months; the consensus was that it is in everybody's interests to talk and work from a single platform.

This issignificant considering the recent organisational problems in the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh affiliated to the Congress-run Indian National Trade Union Congress. The RMMS is the officially recognised trade union in the textile industry and claims to represent the largest number of workers. But union leaders like Singh and Dada Samant now spearheading the Maharashtra Girni Kamgar Union believe that the diffused strength of unions, however large, has allowed the RMMS to become the voice of the mill worker.