Centre's casual approach irks TUs: ILC meet soon

New Delhi, April 16: Central Trade Unions (TUs) today lashed out at the Centre for its "casual approach" towards open violation of labour laws and deployment of contract workers among others and vowed to take up the issues at the forthcoming two-day Indian Labour Conference, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on April 27.

The CITU and AITUC leaders said the TUs including the BMS and the INTUC would adopt a " collective approach" also on strengthening of the labour laws, their effective implementation, and amendments in Payment of Bonus Act and the Contract Labour( Regulation and Abolition) Act.

Talking to UNI, CITU President MK Pandhe and AITUC National Secretary D L Sachdeva said it was unfortunate that the government had not brought a Bill in Parliament till date on provision of social security to over 370 million unorganised workers and improve their service working conditions in the light of a consensus reached at the ILC last session.

"The documents sent to us on the ILC agenda indicate that the government is not that keen on labour issues. It has displayed its casual approach," Mr Pandhe said.

The government did not seem to be keen on solving the labour issues pending for long, the CITU president said adding that the TUS had repeatedly asked the government to change its labour policy.

"The way the government wants to hold the ILC session is quite unsatisfactory," Mr Pandhe added.

The TU leaders said the last ILC session was held on December 9 and 10, 2005, whereas the practice has been to hold annual ILC session to discuss the labour issues. The ILC is the highest tripartite forum to deal with the issues concerning labour.

On strengthening of labour laws, as per the official item on the ILC agenda, the TUs leaders said the issue had time and again been brought to the notice of the PM, raised several times through Call Attention notice in Parliament and even a Special State Labour Ministers Conference was convened by Labour minister Oscar Fernandes last year.

"But unfortunately no specific committment has come either from the state governments or from the central government," Mr Sachdev said.

As regards the amendment to the Payment to the Bonus Act is concerned, the existing ceiling in respect of elegibility and the payment limit, had become outdated as the wages had increased.

Still worse, the assurance given by the PM on August 17 last year to central TUs that the cabinet is considering amendment to the Bonus Act, had not materialised as yet with the result that majority of workers had been deprived of bonus.

The TU leaders said the incidence of contract labour is increasing day by day with the result that their numbers had far surpassed those of regular workers.

"This is in clear violation of the existing Act, which prohibits deployment of Contract labour on jobs of regular and perennial nature," Mr Pandhe said adding that further this Act required to be amended with respect of absorption of contract workers on regular basis on issuance of notification by the appropriate government.

"Still worse, the employers including the Public Sector Undertakings( PSUs) are violating this provision and thereby exploiting the workers because of prevailing large scale unemployment," Mr Sachdev said.

On another item of the agenda, they said to improve employability of youth the government would have to find ways and means to enable employability of youth by various vocational and other training both at the government and the employers' level.

On the three years' approach of the UPA government towards labour issues since it came to power at the Centre, they said they had found that the position of the workers had not improved despite the assurance in the National Common Minimum Programme.

"We opine that the government in the name of industrial development should not only implement the labour laws, prevent large scale deployment of contract workers and bring about the Bill for the unrecognised labourers. The government must fulfill the CMP committments on labour issues during its remaining term," they added.

UNI