People's Democracy

CONVENTION�S DECLARATION

THIS National Convention of Workers, held on September 14, 2009 at Mavalankar Hall, New Delhi, expresses serious concern over:

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

2) continuing job losses resulting in loss of livelihood to millions of the workers across the sectors 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, adding to the sufferings of the entire toiling people;

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 sector workers, including the contract workers, owing to the restrictive provisions under the schemes and absence of any National Fund for the Unorganised Sector (NAFUS) as recommended by the National Commission on Enterprises in Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) and parliamentary standing committee on labour; 

5) move of the government for disinvestment of shares in profit making central public sector enterprises.

The National Convention urges upon the government to take urgent remedial/corrective measures to address the aforesaid concerns of working people effectively so that

1) price rise of essential commodities is contained through appropriate corrective and distributive measures like universal PDS and containing speculation in commodity market;

2) concrete proactive measures are taken for linkage of employment protection in the recession stricken sectors with the stimulus package being offered to the concerned entrepreneurs and for augmenting public investment in infrastructure;

3) strict enforcement of all basic labour laws without any exception or exemption and stringent punitive measures for violation of labour laws;

4) steps are taken for removal of all restrictive provisions based on poverty line in respect of eligibility of coverage of the schemes under the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act 2008 and creation of National Fund for the Unorganised Sector to provide for a National Floor Level Social Security to all unorganised workers including the contract/casual workers in line with the recommendation of National Commission on Enterprises in Unorganised Sector and parliamentary standing committee on labour;

5) disinvestment of shares of central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) is not resorted to for meeting the budgetary deficit and, instead, their growing reserve and surplus is used for expansion and modernisation purposes and also for revival of the sick public sector undertakings.

The National Convention adopts the following programmes to highlight the above burning issues facing the working people:

1) state level joint conventions;

2) observance of All India Protest Day on October 28, 2009.

The National Convention calls upon the workers and employees, and their unions, irrespective of affiliations, to unitedly highlight their concern over the above mentioned burning issues facing them. The Convention also appeals to them to participate in the joint programmes of the trade unions en masse to press for the abovementioned demands before the government.