Unions wave strike card as talks fail

Senior ministers of the NDA government will hold a second round of dialogue with the unions on Tuesday

Consensus eluded a crucial meeting between trade union leaders and the government, prompting unions to assert that they will not call off the nationwide strike on September 2.

Senior ministers of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government will hold a second round of dialogue with the unions on Tuesday. The government’s efforts to persuade unions to call off the strike by proposing steps related to minimum wages and contract workers didn’t work out.

“Looking at the proposals put up by the government on Wednesday, there is nothing which compels us to reconsider our stance of going for a strike. The strike will continue,” said D L Sachdeva, secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), a union affiliated with the Communist Party of India.

A ministerial panel led by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met union representatives here to address their 12-point charter of demands. Apart from Jaitley, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State in prime minister's office Jitendra Singh attended the meeting. The unions have called a one-day strike to oppose the labour law proposals of the government.

The unions were fuming over the latest proposals of the labour ministry to amend the minimum wages Act and the contract labour Act and termed them as “anti-workers”.

Union Labour Secretary Shankar Aggarwal said a Cabinet note was being prepared to amend the Minimum Wages Act, Sachdeva said. According to the government proposal, the minimum wages of workers will be set according to the financial metric of a category of states. “The basic principle behind the amendment is states will be divided in three groups depending upon their cost of living,” a senior labour ministry official said. Sachdeva said the government proposed the minimum wages of the workers to be in the range of Rs 7,500-9,000 a month. However, the trade unions demand a minimum wage of Rs 15,000 a month for all set of jobs.

According to another proposal, contract workers will be mandatorily hired through staffing companies so that they are covered under social security schemes instead of hiring workers from the open market. The unions strongly opposed this, as they want no contractual workers in work with perennial nature and wage parity between regular and contract workers.

Jaitley had highlighted two issues related to contract workers in the last meeting of the ministerial panel held on July 19. “The finance minister mentioned that there are two aspects of the issue – outsourcing in the perennial jobs and terms and conditions of contract workers. He stated that both aspects should be taken care of,” said the minutes of the meeting held in July.

Earlier, Jaitley had said social security to contract workers be provided and the issue of minimum wages be dealt keeping in view the “diversity of the country”. After this, the labour ministry came up with two proposals and presented the status report in the meeting held on Monday.

“Their demand is more particular on minimum wages, contract labour and the bonus Act along with enforcement of labour laws…We are hopeful of a consensus because the government is very positive about the workers’ demands. The earlier government didn’t even move an inch in the progressive direction,” Dattatreya said.

The minister said the government was moving the changes to the minimum wages Act to the Union Cabinet keeping in mind the judgments of the Supreme Court, recommendations of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), Planning Commission and the Second National Labour Commission. He even said the government is “agreeable” on seven-eight out of the 12 demands of the trade unions.

“The government is not at all dealing with the core issues and just orally touching upon the fringe areas of labour law changes,” said Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) President A K Padmanabhan.

Employers, on the other hand, welcomed the government’s proposal regarding mandatory hiring of contract workers through staffing companies. “The staffing companies are accountable and provide social security schemes to the contract workers hired through them. Today there is a large amount of workers in an informal engagement and the trade unions say they are not provided any social security. This move will ensure provident fund, ESIC and other social security benefits are passed on to contract labour,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, president of the Indian Staffing Federation.