Indian Today in a recent article titled “Irate Trade Unions declare war”(Dec 4, 2010) highlighted the steady increase in the number of labour disputes and flash strikes, triggered by persisting low incomes, an unabated rise in the prices of essential commodities, lack of social security and flagrant violations of labour laws, in the past three years in various parts of the country.
According to the Employment Survey conducted by the Labour Bureau, unemployment has reached an alarming proportion of 9.4%. Lakhs of workers, particularly in the export oriented sectors have lost their jobs due to the global economic crisis during the last three years. Many sectors like the handloom and textile sectors, which provide employment to lakhs of workers are still facing a serious situation resulting in loss of employment to large numbers of workers.
In a joint memorandum of Central Trade Unions, submitted to the Finance Minister, recently, as part of the pre-budget consultation, union leaders have highlighted the inhuman exploitation of contract labourers "who died in industrial accidents, be it the BALCO chimney collapse, fires in Agra shoe companies, in Bhushan Steel or construction workers, including those employed in the prestigious Delhi Metro project and in the construction related activities of the Commonwealth games."(http://www.citucentre.org/monthly_journals).
Trade unions observed that contractualisation and outsourcing have become so rampant in the private and public sector undertakings and government departments. Millions of workers are at present employed as contract workers in regular jobs, to perform work of a permanent nature. These workers are paid miserably low wages and have no social security benefits, thus creating a situation "where two types of workers work side by side in an enterprise, doing the same job but getting highly un equal wages and benefits, thereby creating rifts among the workers."
Trade union leaders alleged that instead of ensuring implementation of labour laws, the governments in several states, except those in the Left ruled states, are resorting to the most brutal police repression on the workers and their union leaders. It is not the employers who are punished for not implementing the laws but the trade union leaders who are punished for demanding their implementation. The most recent example is the handcuffing and imprisonment of A. Soundararajan, Secretary of CITU and the General Secretary of its Tamil Nadu state committee for leading the fight of the Foxconn workers.
Severe restrictions are imposed on the workers and the common people, even on exercising their basic right to protest. In many cities today, wall writing, display of banners, buntings and flags at public places are not allowed; and restrictions are being imposed by the courts on demonstrations, rallies, trade union leaders said.
According to the joint memorandum, the government and its law enforcement machinery has become totally subservient to the corporates, domestic and foreign, protecting them even in cases of gross violations of labour laws. The 8 hour work day, minimum wages, social security benefits, the right to organisation and collective bargaining, the Contract Labour Abolition Act etc were all won by the working class, through decades of hard struggles. But today all these laws are violated with impunity by the employers.
A.K.Padmanabhan, CITU President said that the UPAI government enacted the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act in 2008, on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. Much hype was generated on providing social security to the un-organized sector workers who constitute 94% of the workers in the country. More than two years down the line, what have the un-organized sector workers gained form this Act, no specific social welfare scheme has been formulated under the Act till now. Only ten existing social welfare schemes have been annexed to the Act and were supposed to cover the unorganized sector workers, he said.
The left political leaders said recent march to Parliament by the trade unions is part of the task of confronting the exploitative process in the name of liberalization. Media reports said the Indian National Trade Union Congress(INTUC) the trade union wing of the ruling Congress party, was part of the group. Its president G.Sanjeeva Reddy was quoted as saying:"it is fighting for respecting labour laws and their implementation."
The CITU delegation to the 43rd Indian Labour Conference strongly criticized the agenda note of the government on contract labor for dealing more with the concerns and problems of the employers and trying to justify and finally seeking to legalize the violations of the existing Act on contract labour. The note was conspicuously silent about the unlawful deployment of the contract labour even in regular production jobs or the so called 'core jobs' and denying them minimum wages.
A study by the United States Labour Department(published in Monthly Labour Review May 2010) on India’s organized sector production workers found the size of contract workers(with slimmer pay packages and few privileges) almost doubling, from 15 per cent to 28 per cent, between 1998 and 2005.
P.K.Gurudasan, Labour Minister of Kerala, who was part of the CITU delegation to the Conference noted that the neoliberal economic policies are resulting in price-rise and unemployment. He underscored the need to protect public sector institutions. He said that the wages under MGNREGA should be at par with the minimum wages fixed by the state government, considering that the wages of agricultural labour in Kerala is double the wages fixed under MGNREGA. Such a policy would substantially benefit the working poor, he said.
He said there is an urgent need to make the wages and other benefit paid to the contract workers at par with others who are engaged in identical nature of work. He also requested the central government to formulate the details regarding financial assistance from the Centre to the States for the operation of the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008 so that the states could implement the various rules and schemes framed by it under the Act. He also wanted the medical benefit admissible under the RSBY scheme to be enhanced to Rs.50,000 from Rs.30,000.
Demands like lifting the ban on recruitment in Government departments, PSUs and autonomous institutions and the scope of MGNREGA be extended to urban areas as well and employment for minimum period of 200 days as recommended by 43rd session of Indian Labour Conference, are also part of the memorandum.
Though the National Social Security Board(NSSB), constituted as per the Act, has unanimously recommended that all the unorganised sector workers in the country should be provided floor level social security that includes old age pension, health and maternity benefits, and accident insurance, and that adequate fund should be created to ensure social security benefits to all the un-organised sector workers, the government has not yet taken any concrete decision on this.
Union Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge while speaking at the second World Social Security Summit, organized by the International Social Security Association in Cape Town, recently, stated that around 430 million workers are employed in the unorganized sector out of a total work force of around 450 million.
The Arjun Dasgupta committee on employment showed that the informal economy accounted for more than 80 per cent of total employment and calculated that by 2017 more than 95 per cent of the work force would find jobs in the unorganized sector, a trend almost endorsed by the findings of the Economic Census for 2005.
The employees in the unorganized sector, despite comprising a majority of the working class in the country, mostly remain in low-paid insecure jobs, have little access to institutionalized social security and are the most vulnerable to the negative impact of economic slowdowns in terms of job loss and wage cuts.
Harsh Mander former civil servant and activist has documented the death of homeless casual labourers-baloon sellers, rickshaw pullers and street vendors, in Delhi, recently. He found out that every day about 10 people die on the streets of Delhi. He wrote that “it can be prevented if the Government made simple public investments in providing shelter and food. The truth is that these public investments are not made and daily avoidable deaths continue because they are people who are too poor to matter.”(The Hindu Oct 3, 2010)
The Union government is reneging on its legal obligation to pay minimum wages, even to the most deprived sections of the population in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. By delinking the wages payable, through a notification, the government of India has made it clear that it disregarded any responsibility to pay minimum wages. Experts have described the practice as “forced labour.”(The Hindu Oct. 23, 2010)
Eight major trade unions came together in a show of strength on September 7, 2010, in response to a strike call by CITU to protest against violation of labour laws, price rise and disinvestment.
This is the thirteenth general strike since 1991 against “disastrous fall out of the neoliberal and pro-corporate policy regime that imperiled the life and livelihood of ordinary people.”
International Labour Organisation’s(ILO) World of Work Report records that from 1990 onwards, wage inequality has risen across the globe including in India. It was also a period when contract employment became the norm. Legislation for abolishment of contract employment stands diluted. Projections by the ILO point to a worsening global unemployment in coming years.
This is the situation when trade unions are regrouping and confronting the political establishment for better regulation of labour rights and greater control over industry and capital.
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