AICTU stages sit-in at Delhi's Jantar Mantar

The All India Centre of Trade Unions (AICTU) on Tuesday staged a day-long sit-in at the Jantar Mantar here over a number of demands, including enhancing minimum wages to Rs.15,000 a month.

"We will intensify the agitation if the government does not heed our demands. The government has bowed down to the industrialists and corporate houses, making anti-workers moves," AICTU general secretary Gopi Kishan told IANS.

Kishan said a memorandum of demands was later submitted to the labour ministry.

The AICTU demands included enhancing minimum wage to Rs.15,000 a month, contain rising prices of essential commodities, and no foreign direct investment (FDI) in railways, defence, insurance and banking sectors, he added.

The other demands, he said, include ending the contract system, extension of social security to workers in the unorganised sector, end of anti-worker amendments in labour laws and easing the process of registration of trade unions.

Kishan claimed that people from Rajasthan, Kerala, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal participated in the sit-in.

On September 2, a nationwide strike called by trade unions was observed in the country.