The Hindu : CITU plans `protest day' on August 13

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Friday, Aug 08, 2003

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CITU plans `protest day' on August 13

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 7. The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has asked the Central Trade Unions to observe August 13 as a "protest day" to express their unhappiness over the Supreme Court's judgment on Wednesday banning the right to strike.

The judgment is having serious implications on the entire trade union movement and the working class must assert its hard earned right to strike through countrywide united struggle, a statement issued by the CITU secretary, Tapan Sen, said here today.

"The CITU secretariat calls upon all the trade unions, irrespective of affiliations to organise protest demonstration in all the workplaces to assert the determination and resolve to defend the right to strike,'' the statement said.

The All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) will observe August 9 — Quit India Movement Day — as protest day against the apex court ruling.

In a statement, the AICCTU general secretary, Swapan Mukherjee, said the right to strike was sacrosanct and not subject to judicial interpretation.

He said that this ruling would provide legal and moral grounds for the BJP Government at the Centre to push through its agenda of "labour reforms" through which it intends to curtail trade union rights, he said.

Meanwhile, reacting to the Supreme Court verdict, the United Trade Union Centre (Lenin-Sarani) vice-president, Krishna Chakraborty, had called upon all sections of Government employees and all democratic-minded people of the country to raise their voice of protest against this most "undemocratic and anti-people" judgment.

"General strike, no doubt, disturbs normal function of the administration and causes suffering to the common people; but instead of giving strictures to the Government concerned, which creates conditions compelling the employees to go for strike, to take away the hard owned fundamental rights of the employees itself is a gross injustice,'' he said.

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