Modi govt deliberately weakening labour laws: Rahul

Congress vice president alleges PM considers Indian worker as dishonest, shirker

Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi today said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government was deliberately weakening labour laws.

“Like we fought for the rights of farmers (on the land acquisition Bill), we will fight for the cause of the workers and stand with them and would not retreat an inch. We will fight BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), Modi and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh),” he said at the 31st Plenary Session of INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress), the trade union wing of the Congress party.

Gandhi said he agreed with the PM’s vision of turning India into a global manufacturing hub to make it more competitive than China, but disagreed with the PM’s assessment of India’s workers. He said the PM considers Indian worker as “dishonest, shirker and one who could be made to work only by wielding the stick”.

“If you look at the new laws being made in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana, you will see that Modi has started a big assault on workers,” he said. Modi feels that workers could be made to work only with ‘hire and fire’ policy and weakening of unions,  Gandhi claimed.

“I do not agree that our worker is either shirker or undisciplined... Our worker is scared. He is scared for his job, about his future and the future of his children,” the Congress Vice President said.

Gandhi said the PM had first planned an onslaught on farmers and now on workers. He said the PM was being “wrongly advised” on the issue. He said the government should play the role of a judge between workers and industry and not become an “advocate of the industry”. Gandhi promised more representation to INTUC leadership in Parliament and state assemblies so that they can raise issues of labour.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the “dissatisfaction” of workers with the “anti-labour and unimaginative” economic policies of the NDA government was obvious from the one day general strike observed in the country on September 2. “We must enlarge the available space for resolving industrial problems through peaceful dialogue involving all the stake holders of the tripartite process — namely workers, industry and government.”

The former PM said the trade union movement has to be made aware that at present Indian economy faces a fragile recovery and inadequate expansion of employment opportunities and public enterprises face an uncertain future.