People's Democracy

J&K TUs Gear up for All-India Strike

 
MEETING in the INTUC office at Jammu on February 5, 2013, Jammu & Kashmir state units of central trade union organisations like the INTUC, AITUC and CITU as well as independent all-India federations in the insurance, banking and other sectors discussed the final arrangements for the state level convention that was scheduled to take place in the city on February 7, 2013. The convention was meant to review the preparatory campaign for the two-day all-India general strike on February 20 and 21. The meeting, presided over by, state INTUC general secretary Thakur Raghubir Singh Chib, decided to make the proposed strike a grand success in Jammu & Kashmir.

It is to be noted that central trade union organisations have called for this countrywide two-day general strike to press for their ten point charter of demands. These are curb on price rise and universalisation of the public distribution system, job protection, enforcement of labour laws, social security for unorganised workers, stop to disinvestment in the public sector undertakings, minimum wages, pension for all, equal wages and benefits to the contract workers, ensuring the right to organisation and collective bargaining, removal of ceiling of bonus, ESI and gratuity,  compulsory registration of trade unions within a period of 45 days and ratification of the ILO conventions 87 and 98 etc. All the trade union representatives expressed serious concern over these most burning problems facing crores of the working people in the country and in the state.

The meeting was attended, among others, by Sham Prasad Kesar and Om Parkash from the CITU, Dev Raj Bhatti from the AITUC, Pawan Kumar Gupta from the insurance sector, Ashwani Pradhan and Anil Vaid from the banking sector and Kuldip Kumar from the INTUC.

The joint meeting appealed to the trade union activists of Jammu & Kashmir to participate in this convention and make the two day general strike a grand and historic success.