Seminar to build consensus on liberalisation of labour laws

New Delhi, Aug 20 (UNI) As part of its sensitisation strategy for liberalising labour laws in textile sector, a one-day seminar involving tripartite leadership from trade unions, Government and employers is scheduled to be held here on August 24.

The seminar, to be inaugurated by Textile Minister Shankersinh Vaghela and organised by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), will focus on major issues such as Restrictions on Employment, Labour Laws in Competing Countries and Compliance Issues relating to Textile and Clothing Industry, the key driver.

A strong political will has to emerge to empower the textile industry to achieve its potential size of 85 billion US dollars by 2010 fo creating millions of gainful job opportunites, higher incomes and increasing exports, according to CITI, an apex organisation of textile industry in India.

''To translate the vision of the textile industry into reality, many policy prescriptions are important. Critical among them is a flexible labour law regime, which can address job creation rather than job retention and help us to leverage our strength in the skilled workforce for meeting competition from countries like China,'' said CITI Chairman Hiren Shah.

''Our effort is to galvanise the consensus and sensitise the pay offs of a liberalised labour law regime to all stakeholders, particularly the workers. We are confident of achieving that goal in the context of the positive signals emanating from the Ministry of Textiles,'' Mr Shah added.

There has been a near consensus across the board about the need for labour laws flexibility in textile and clothing sector to capitalise on the emerging opportunities. But there is a lag in implementing that consensus apparently because of the apprehension that it may lead to loss of employment.

At the tripartite discussions, the employers would try to impress upon the trade union leadership and the government the export business and employment that are being lost on account of rigid labour laws. The background paper prepared by the CITI points out that many garmenting companies refuse to take up large orders since they cannot release at lead period, the additional hands recruited during the busy season.

All competing countries in textiles and clothing have been empowered to restructure the labour force. That enables them to hire more labour during the busy season and release them during the slack season so that they can go for other jobs.

The Textile and Clothing Industry employs mostly rural workers, since the level of skill required in the industry is not high.

''Our vision of becoming a developed country by 2020 can be achieved only by taking proactive and bold decisions on every front particularly in the textile sector where Rs 140,000 crore is required as investment in the next few years, in order to generate 12 million new jobs and an additional 25 billion exports,'' the CITI Chairman said.

CITI also pointed out that the handicaps of an Indian exporters compared to his counterparts in the competing countries are many, such as power shortage, high rate of interest, infrastructure bottlenecks and clogging of goods at ports apart from labour laws rigidities.

Confederation's background paper for the seminar flag-marked several gray areas in the Factories Act, 1948, Industrial Disputes Act 1947, Contract Labour (Regulation&Abolition) Act, Trade Union Act 1926 which need to be amended expeditiously to pave the way for a liberalised labour law regime.

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