10 unions call for nationwide protest on Aug 2 against labour bills

Ten central trade unions on Wednesday gave a call for holding nation-wide protests on August 2 against the government's move to introduce two labour codes in Parliament, claiming that their objections to the draft laws were ignored totally.

The central trade unions in a joint statement also demanded the withdrawal of the two codes from the Lok Sabha.

"Central Trade Unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC and Independent Federations/Associations - take strong objection and condemn bulldozing of codification of labour laws and other laws in spite of strong objections from the trade union movement," a joint statement issued by the 10 Central Trade Unions said.

The unions condemn anti-worker moves of the government and call upon the workers, their unions and federations, irrespective of affiliations, to observe August 2, 2019, with countrywide united protest and raise the demand to withdraw the proposed anti-worker legislations, ignoring all norms of international labour standards, the statement said.

The central trade unions also called upon the Members of Parliament to oppose the ruling party's move.

They said that the government have made known their intention to codify various labour laws through an unconstitutional method of making it a part of the budget speech on July 5, 2019, ignoring the state jurisdiction of the concurrent list in the Constitution.

The government has introduced the Code on Wages Bill 2019 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code Bill 2019 in Lok Sabha on July 23.

The unions said that the contents of both the Bills totally ignore all the points of oppositions and reservations on various provisions of both the Bills curtailing the rights of the workers and are prejudicial to their interests raised by all the central trade union organizations.

Contrary to the claims by the Government, they said that these codes would enhance the process of exclusion of workers from the benefits they accrue from the existing laws, by simply raising the threshold level of the number of workers for application of those laws.

The wage code has denied the agreed formula of wage calculation as per 15th Indian Labour conference (ILC), and add on 25 per cent as directed by Supreme Court judgment in Raptakos case and which was repeatedly and unanimously accepted by 45th and 46th ILC, it said