OBSTINACY should have a limit ! The employers’ lobby in the country has crossed all limits demanding total enslavement of labour, purportedly to ensure employment generation, but actually to meet their insatiable thirst for more profits at the cost of labour.

In the liberalised economic scenario, every day they are under assault by the foreign companies, and owing to the boundless import of foreign products, gradually getting marginalised in the Indian market. They are not in a position to hit back at their rivals from abroad, nor are they potent enough to ask for a retraction of the policies of the servile government to give them a level playing field. And their impotence has found expression in their mad cry for deregulation of labour laws.

The full page advertisement in the national dailies on December 15 and 16 by the Indian Chamber of Commerce appealed to prime minister to 1) remove all legislative hurdles for contract employment and allow deployment of contract labour everywhere 2) remove all such clauses from the Industrial Disputes Act which discipline the employers and 3) put a virtual ban on strike. All these proposals are to facilitate employment generation.

Hypocrisy has crossed all bounds of shamelessness. And unfortunately such hypocrisy is getting profuse publicity in the electronic and print media as wisdom, while the united struggles and trade union views have been blacked out. After all, when class interest is to be protected, propriety and rationality become meaningless to the ruling polity and their patrons.

The Chamber demanded removal of Chapter VB of the Industrial Disputes Act to ensure that for closure and retrenchment, employers are not required even to observe even the formality of taking permission from the government.

But the Chamber’s officials most cunningly suppressed the fact that they are already very much enjoying this facility. Should they reply: "Of the closed industrial units numbering several lakhs, in how many cases have their members taken prior permission from the government?" Not even in one per cent cases. Should they reply: "Under which clause of the Industrial Disputes Act could the Maruti Udyog management in Haryana, and that in Pepsico at Kanpur, oust the entire workforce from the job since the workers refused to sign the so-called good conduct bond. Under which clause of the ID Act could they insist on such a bond of slavery ?" The concerned workers were not on strike, but still they were outside of the factory gate only because their employers wanted it so. Nobody was prosecuted for such daylight violation of the ID Act. What more facility do you want Mr Indian Chamber ?

The Chamberwallas are also quite innovative in finding many more crooked ways to retrench workers and usurp their dues. One example may be given. The management of the M/s Roto Pump Ltd (plot no 14) of Noida Export Processing Zone (NEPZ), has driven out all the 60 workers working in the factory for the last 10/12 years, from November 23, without even serving any dismissal/retrenchment order. As per the company's record those workers deserted the job, and now they are operating with a new set of workforce. The mechanism is plain and simple. Those workers of Roto Pump were initially debarred entry in the NEPZ campus itself by the customs officials at the gate, under secret instructions of the concerned employer. And the bonhomie between the employer and the NEPZ administration is such that the security guards of the customs department at the NEPZ gate are now insisting that the concerned workers give a signed declaration on the employer’s proforma that "they were not on work on their own" as a condition for allowing their entry into the NEPZ. In this manner the customs authority has obediently shouldered the responsibility of illegally retrenching the workers at the behest of the employers in the NEPZ. The same is the situation in all the Export Processing Zones in the country. Further it has become the regular practice for many companies in all the EPZs to just close down after the tax-holiday period, retrench all the workers, and start a new company at the same place with a new set of workers. Only the workers stand to lose.

The Chamber has demanded removal of all legislative hurdles for contract employment everywhere without any restrictions, but what are they doing now, even when the Contract Labour (Regulation &Abolition Act) is very much in existence ? Farming out/outsourcing permanent jobs, have now become a regular phenomenon in industries both in the public and private sector. The government itself is the biggest employer of contract workers in the country. There are plenty of examples where the employers in big industries, and particularly MNCs, in the consumer goods and pharmaceutical sector have been getting a sizable quantum of their regular production done through contractors, sometimes keeping departmental apparatus idle. This is squarely illegal as per existing statutes. This has been going on unrestricted and unhindered for the last one decade, particularly after the onset of liberalisation. In some government institutions, contract workers were regularised by court orders. But hardly any private employer has faced such hurdles anywhere although they are the biggest offenders. Nobody has been punished for such offences, as the offenders and executor hail from the same stable.

Can illegality and disrespect towards the rule of law go further ? Probably it can without limit when the enforcement authority -- the government surrenders with loyalty to serve the employers by all means. Had such illegality been committed by the workers or their unions, they would have been behind bars. But the law-offender employers are found at the break-fast table or dining with the ministers, or in the prime ministerial advisory panels.

Now, given all such blank cheques to defy laws throughout the decade, if not from earlier, how much employment has the Chamber’s clan generated ?

As per official figures and various studies and surveys, growth of employment has been consistently declining all through the decade, despite all claims of the proponents of liberalisation, and despite the incidence of strikes remaining much lower than the incidence of closures and lock-outs. And it is the considered observation of the World Employment Report that the deregulation of labour laws has little relation to the prospect of employment generation. Thus all noise of employment generation by the Chamber while demanding complete deregulation of labour, and its wide circulation in the media is a naïve ploy to befool people.

In the background of the mounting offensive from foreign companies, the Indian Chamber, along with other employers’ organisations, has been trying to find ways and means to survive at the cost of labour. They fail to see that they cannot survive through this route. Even if labour laws are dismantled, the benefit will be totally reaped by the MNCs, and their relative position will remain unaltered. Their efforts might be better directed towards getting at least a level playing field which the Fund/Bank/WTO regime and the servile government is denying to them. The government is their ally, but at the same time it is under servility with the MNCs.

The paradox is that despite the ferocious onslaught from the employers’ lobby, the trade union movement cannot help fighting against the policies of reckless liberalisation of import and boundless concession to foreign capital, which benefits the employers lobby to the extent the government could be compelled to take some corrective measures. Even the recent raising of customs duties in certain sectors in the background of removal of QR, the outcome of militant involvement of workers and peasants countrywide in the protest actions, benefited the employers more.

However, this paradox will remain, and the owners’ lobby is not expected to change its attitude. The onslaught on labour rights will continue to mount in the coming days, particularly after the constitution of the Second Commission of Labour by the BJP government. The predetermined decision to retune the labour laws with the liberalised economic scenario as its terms of reference. The ID Act and the Contract Labour Act are prime targets for total dismantling to facilitate total enslavement of labour.

The adversaries have come out with misinformation to disarm the labour.

The trade union movement must consolidate itself and prepare for battle. The design for slavery will not pass.