People's Democracy

TUs to Gear up for Action

MEETING at the INTUC headquarters in New Delhi on July 19, central trade unions expressed serious concern over the following:

1) Rising prices of the essential commodities including food grains and vegetables, severe hardships for the mass of the people;

2) Continuing job losses, loss of livelihood for millions of workers owing to recession and economic slowdown.

3) Non-implementation of and rampant violation of basic labour laws pertaining to minimum wages, working hours, social security, safety in workplace and trade union rights etc throughout the country.

4) Extreme inadequacy of the provisions and schemes under the Unorganised Workers� Social Security Act 2008 to provide any substantive relief to the vast multitude of unorganised workers including contract workers, restrictive provisions under the schemes and absence of a National Fund for the Unorganised Sector (NAFUS) as recommended by the NCEUS and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour.

5) The government�s move for disinvestment in the central public sector enterprises.

The central trade unions called upon the workers and employees, and their unions irrespective of affiliations, to unitedly highlight their concern over the abovementioned burning issues facing them. At the same time, they urged the government to take urgent corrective measures to effectively address the aforesaid concerns. 

The central trade unions decided to submit a memorandum to the prime minister on the aforesaid issues and hold a national convention of trade unions at Delhi in September to chalk out common action programmes.

Leaders from INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU and AICCTU attended the meeting. BMS, UTUC and TUCC could not come but expressed support to the proposal. (INN)