Unorganised Sector Left Out Of Labour Meet

Representatives of the National Council for Labour, an umbrella organisation consisting of workers from the unorganised sector, yesterday told a press conference that they were not being invited to the ILC despite the fact that the unorganised sector represented 93 per cent of the workforce in the country.

On no account can the government say we are not representative of the unorganised sector, said D Thankappan, a secretary of the NCL, adding that the Council fulfilled all the relevant criteria required by the government. The membership of the organisation was over 5 lakh workers, they were represented in more than four industries (home-workers, fishworkers, construction, forest, anganwadi and beedi among others) and in more than four states (the NCL is represented in 13 states).

 

Renana Jhabvala of SEWA said during talks with the labour ministry in 1994, officials told them that giving representation to the unorganised sector would mean opening a Pandoras box.

In 1994, Jhabvala acknowledged, SEWA had a registered membership of 2.2 lakh workers and could not, therefore, be admitted to the ILC. Last year, however, after the NCL was formed, there was no way now they could be kept out, she added.

She said the NCL had received no replies to letters to labour minister M Arunachalam or labour secretary L D Mishra, requesting an invitation, especially because a discussion on floor-level minimum wages is on the agenda of the conference.

Asked why the government was hesitant about inviting the unorganised sector, Thankappan put it down to dilatory bureaucratic machinery. He said the NCL was willing and ready for verification, but that they had not been contacted by labour commissioners so far.

Interestingly, the concept of floor-level minimum wage that will be discussed at the ILC was the subject of some argument at the standing committee meeting on labour held in the capital last month. Even as all sides agreed that some such concept must exist, the employers insisted that minimum wages should be subject to the area and type of work.

When the trade unions and employers clashed on this point, the employers won the argument by telling the trade unions that they could not, in any case, speak on behalf of the unorganised sector. It is this loophole, NCL representatives say, that they want to plug.

If they were invited, Jhabvala said, they would like to significantly enlarge the concept of minimum wage to cover social security benefits that would ensure minimum survival to the worker. These would cover health benefits, child care, minimum wages and minimum employment to the worker.

We would like the government to focus their poverty alleviation schemes in areas where wage levels are lowest, Thankappan said.