The central trade unions, including the RSS-supported Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), criticised the Union government for holding a National Labour Conference in Tirupati earlier this week without inviting the trade unions or the employers’ associations.
“The Centre should not keep the trade unions out of the consultations on implementing the four Labour Codes,” they said.
A resolution adopted at the 151st Central Executive Committee meeting of the BMS held in Bhubaneswar on August 27 demanded that the Centre immediately call the Indian Labour Conference (ILC) and uphold the tripartite tradition of India. They said the ILC should discuss the burning issues related to labour and find amicable solutions in the interest of the worker in particular and the nation in general.
“Tripartism is the lifeline of labour relations in India. Successive governments have followed the tradition of tripartism in letter and spirit, maybe with a few exemptions,” the resolution said highlighting the importance of the ILC, which was initiated by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
“The system continued till 2015 when the last tripartite ILC was held. Thereafter, in spite of demand by the BMS and other trade unions, the conference is due for the last seven years,” the BMS said and added that the Tirupati conference agenda was an indication of the “death knell of the tripartite culture in India”.
“The government has openly flouted the mandate of the last labour conference and excluded the tripartite constituents at the Tirupati conference,” the BMS said.
The AITUC condemned the statements made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Tirupati conference. “Mr. Modi says that his government has taken initiatives to abolish the laws from ‘the period of slavery’. But the fact is that these codes, in their real content, will impose a new system of slavery on the workers, particularly the unorganised, contract and outsourced workers who constitute more than 90% of the workforce. Workers and the central trade unions have been consistently seeking repeal of the codes but Mr. Modi does not see, nor hear,” said AITUC general secretary Amarjeet Kaur.
The CITU denounced the Centre’s “desperate bid” to mislead and confuse the people on its “brazenly anti-labour policies” through the Tirupati conclave and naming it the National Labour Conference through a “deceptive” media campaign. The Centre was trying to “mislead the people through its campaign blitzkrieg not by facts but by misstatements, that too by the highest person in governance, on the rights and conditions of labour who are actually producing and generating national wealth but are being squeezed and subjected to immense deprivation and distress only to fatten the purse of a handful of private corporates and impose the conditions of slavery on the workers,” CITU general secretary Tapan Sen said.
