Strike brought to fore progress in unity among TUs: Karat

The two-day 'general strike' held by various trade unions this week was very important and showed that some progress had been made in ensuring unity among trade unions, CPI-M leader Prakash Karat said today.
"There is a unity among trade unions, who are mostly party-affiliated, after a long time. Whether the Congress, BJP or Left, all trade unions are now on a common platform," he said at a book release function here.
This week's 'general strike' was called by all the unions and 'this unity is important', he said, referring to the 48-hour protest from February 20 called by 11 trade unions against UPA's economic and alleged anti-labour policies.

Karat said that despite 'identities and consciousness' causing setback, trade union movement had progressed and 'we have made some progress' in the recent years.
He was speaking at the book release of 'Making of the Madras Working Class' by Dilip Veeraraghavan.
There was a lot of difficulty even today in the country to form trade unions in corporate companies including those like car-maker Hyundai, he said adding either the workers were denied permission or there were only company-allowed unions.