People's Democracy

IN a statement issued by its secretariat from New Delhi on July 11, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has taken strong exception to the prime minister’s call for ‘reforms’ in labour laws. The prime minister has declared that his cabinet would "vigorously pursue" the labour ‘reform’ agenda. He made the government’s intention known in his advisory Council on Trade and Industry, in an interface with leaders of the corporate lobby on July 10, that has become an intermittent event. The CITU said the prime minister’s call for consensus on the issue was also dubious.

Noting that possibly the prime minister was carried away by the report of the Second National Commission on Labour, presented to him recently, the CITU said the commission’s recommendations are not the last word on the subject. The prime minister would do well to remind himself that there are dissenting notes appended to the report.

The government of India is yet to make the report public. It has not even bothered to circulate the report to the central trade unions, not to speak of initiating a dialogue with them. The Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex tripartite forum in the country, that normally meets in the second quarter of every year, is yet to be convened. The CITU recalled how the ILC meeting last year, where the prime minister asked trade union leaders to cooperate with his liberalisation and labour ‘reform’ policies, had to end without adopting any conclusion because of the total rejection of the government’s policies by all the trade unions, without exception.

In this background, the CITU said, the prime minister’s arbitrary declaration before the corporate lobby only reflected an "ethical deficit" in the style of his governance. This deserves as serious denigration as was his own fulmination against a similar deficit on part of the business class.

The CITU also lambasted the prime minister’s and his cohorts’ repeated claim that "labour reforms will crate more employment opportunities." Ground realities anywhere in the world do not substantiate such an illusion.

The CITU has called upon the workers and the trade union movement to stoutly oppose the prime minister’s unilateral declaration and unitedly rally to defeat the retrograde labour ‘reform’ moves. (INN)