The Hindu : PM's call for labour reforms opposed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 12, 2002

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PM's call for labour reforms opposed

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JULY 11. The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) today took exception to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's declaration that his Government would "vigorously pursue" the labour reforms agenda.

Reacting to Mr. Vajpayee's remarks on Wednesday at the Trade and Industry Advisory Council meeting, the CITU secretariat said his call for consensus on the labour reforms was also "dubious". "Possibly the Prime Minister is carried away by the report of the Second National Commission on Labour (NLC) presented to him recently. But its recommendations are not the last word on the subject. The Prime Minister would do well to remind himself that there are dissenting reports appended to the report," it said. The Government was yet to make the report public and had not even circulated it to the central trade unions.

The Indian Labour Conference (ILC) — which normally met in the second quarter of every year — was yet to be convened. At last year's meeting, the Prime Minister exhorted the trade unions to cooperate with the liberalisation and labour reforms policies but this was totally rejected. Hence, "the Prime Minister's arbitrary declaration before the corporate lobby only reflects the ethical deficit in the style of his governance" and this deserved to be condemned as much as his own decrying of such "deficit" on the part of the business class.

"The Prime Minister and his cohorts go on repeating that labour reforms will create more employment opportunities. Such an illusion is not substantiated by the ground realities," the CITU said. The National Assembly of Workers scheduled to meet in Delhi on July 15 would give a concrete shape for a countrywide united action on these issues, it said.

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