Halt the Indiscriminate Privatisation!

Call by the Central Trade Unions

                                                                                                                    
Divide and Rule

Modi government has made a departure from the long standing practise followed in holding meetings with trade unions. Generally all the trade unions were always invited together to place their viewpoints whenever there is an agenda on labour, to facilitate the Committee to have a holistic understanding on the labour organisations’ views on the subject under examination/consideration. But a fragmented exercise is adopted by the government now, for the first time, to solicit opinions from the Central Trade Unions. 

Not Implement But to Consult

The implementation of the Labour Codes in its present form and content should be stopped and/or stalled and all the Labour Codes should be thoroughly restructured/rewritten in consultation with  all the trade union organisations as they are the biggest stakeholder in the matter, and finalised in consensus with them since the workers are the worst-affected by these Labour Codes  We have been seeking the scrap of the four labour codes in its present form and demanding re-visiting of the whole process of labour legislations. 

No ILC

Moreover as per precedence, procedure and existing laws followed in the country, for any changes in labour laws or formulating new laws, the trade unions as the major and biggest stakeholders are consulted from the very first stage of such an exercise taken. After the consultation with all stakeholders the process is taken to tripartite forum for consensus including Indian Labour Conference.

In the present case, the trade unions were never consulted for drafting of labour codes bilaterally or in the tripartite forum. The highest tripartite forum in the country the Indian labour conference, which is supposed to be held every year, may be with rare exceptions, were not held by the Govt since last 10 years, despite repeated persuasion by all the Central Trade Unions in the country.

CTUs are Ignored by the Government

Even the suggestions/rejoinders/amendments etc conveyed by all the Central Trade Union Organisations on all the Labour Codes and Draft Rules framed thereon as accessed by them directly from notifications by the Labour Ministry or from their website, on every aspects, almost clause by clause—all in constructive approach (which are all matter of records) were all ignored (that too without any acknowledgement) by the Govt and the Labour Ministry while finalising the Labour Codes for putting into enactment-process.

None of our suggestions presented to the Parliamentary standing committee were conceded in the code on wages which was the first code brought in the Parliament in 2019 and also referred to for examination by the Standing Committee.

We understood that the government is not interested at all to pay heed to any of the suggestions of trade unions in their obsession on so called “ease of doing business” for the employers. And in such process of deliberate bias of the Govt/Ministry in favour of employers, the Labour Codes took such retrograde focus, form and contents in the matter of drastically squeezing their coverage, negative alteration of working conditions and abrogation of basic labour rights that we had to take steadfast position demanding withdrawal/scrap of the proposed labour codes.

Despite our reasoned opposition, the Government chose Covid-19 time to introduce the other three codes in September 2020 for passage by Parliament when the workers were in deep distress and the Disaster Management Act was in promulgation and at the top of it the whole opposition was absent from the Parliament due to on-going walkout caused by the stalemate demanding the return of 8 MPs who were suspended during the debate on three farm laws in Rajya Sabha.

Despite the opposition from the trade unions all over India through protests and then even a strike action on 26th November 2020 seeking withdrawal/scrap of proposed Four Labour Codes, the Government went ahead to frame rules. That exercise was another mockery of all democratic norms as the so called online consultation on such a serious issue and despite trade unions' objection, was being carried through. The trade unions were forced to boycott such a sham exercise.

Scrap the Labour Codes 

•    Labour Codes, instead of ensuring universal coverage, have actually pushed out majority of the workers out of the coverage of all basic laws by increasing threshold limit and other means
•    Labour Codes repealed 29 labour laws and on the plea of subsuming them in the codes eliminated and or grossly diluted almost all labour-rights/protection related provisions from those 29 laws, besides enormously enhancing the rights/arbitrary powers to violate/alter even the provisions of Labour Codes by the employers and bureaucrats/executives in the government.
•    Labour Codes imposed various impractical conditionalities on the elementary rights of the workers to form trade unions or for collective action including protests, strike etc which virtually tantamount to put a ban on those rights, thereby imposing conditions of virtual slavery on the workers, in gross violation of the core labour standards formulated by ILO through various conventions/resolutions---in all of which Government of India is a party.
•    Labour Codes in its present forms and contents is a mockery to basic democratic and legislative process as well. It contains such atrocious provisions in respect of various clauses relating to labour rights and their working conditions by which the executives both in centre and states are open-endedly empowered to change and alter even those provisions of Code without formal clearance by parliament or any legislative forum.

Even ILO India office facilitated an exercise on different labour codes with all the Central Trade Unions and the collective understanding arrived at was also not conceded to by the government. The stated motive of the government has been very clear from the very beginning that whole exercise is for "Ease of doing business" totally biased in favour of the employers.

Hard Won Rights Snatched Away

To place it bluntly we consider the four labour codes as negation of the labour rights won over after struggle of 150 years from British Raj onwards. These codes negate our right to strike, make union registration highly problematic and arbitrary de-recognition of unions easy; the process of conciliation and adjudication cumbersome and dilatory; winding up labour courts and  introducing tribunal for workers; overriding power to registrars to de- register unions unilaterally; definition of wage being changed and the schedule of occupations for minimum wages applicability being abolished; Occupational Safety and Health code has been made totally non-inclusive by way of arbitrarily increasing threshold  for coverage so that right of safety of every worker is in total jeopardy; the inspections have been done away with and inspection job are replaced by facilitators to facilitate employers to violate their statutory obligations; change in industrial code and its rule for increasing threshold from 100 to 300 would push out 70 percent of industries out of the applicability of labour laws; the changes in factory act also would throw out substantial number of workforce from the application of labour protection; fix term employment is fully devoid of labour law protection; unlimited apprenticeship and no compulsion of absorption is another way of exploitation; punishment on employers on violation has been totally diluted whereas penalty on the trade union leaders  has been  increased on flimsy  grounds; the employment-threshold for Contractors to be licenced has been increased from 20 to 50; outsourcing and contractorisation even in core/permanent and perennial jobs has been made normal; recruitment of sanctioned posts not being done rather there is ban on new post creation leading to rising unemployment.

We hereby stand with our consistent position that the Government should scrap the four labour codes in the present form, begin afresh the exercise of labour law changes/reforms with  a clear focus of making them more inclusive to ensure universal coverage of the entire labour force in respect of working conditions and labour-rights. And the exercise should be with all the stakeholders without any bias and firmly based on consesuality.

Unorganised Workers

In the meanwhile all the labour laws as existed before the formulating of four labour codes should remain on board in practise including their enforcement through regular and periodic inspection mechanism and complaint-based inspection system in particular instead of so called digital portal-based one. New schemes be created for universal social security coverage to new sectors of employment such as gig economy/app-based employment, and other informal economy workers including those registered under E-Shram Portal, through the Unorganised Sector Social Security Act 2009.

Ratify ILO Conventions

The Government should ratify the ILO convention numbers 187 and 155 on Occupational Safety and Health which have been brought under the Fundamental Principles of Rights at Work (FPRW).