Date:08/08/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/08/08/stories/2003080806841100.htm

National

A judicial assault on workers' rights: CPI

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 7. The Communist Party of India (CPI) today sought a review of the ruling that Government employees have no fundamental, legal, moral or equitable right to go on strike by a full bench of the Supreme Court.

In a statement, the CPI Central Secretariat described the ruling as a "judicial assault'' on the democratic rights of workers and employees who had won those rights, including the right to strike, through more than a hundred years of sacrifices and bitter struggles in India and abroad.

Referring to the judgment that states that employees have to resort to the machinery provided under different statutory provisions for the purpose of redressal of their grievances, the party wondered: "What happens when the authorities arbitrarily and unilaterally deprive the employees of long existing benefits and facilities, and then refuse to have any talk or negotiation with associations and unions which exist under legal provision and also the Constitutional right to Freedom of Association ?''

The party also wanted to know whether the workers were to accept the "arbitrary actions mutely and submissively and do some more work more honestly, diligently and efficiently, in the hope that the gesture will be appreciated by the authorities sometimes in the future?"

"Ground reality will show that even collective bargaining cannot be enforced without strike as a weapon in the hands of the employees.

``As for legal and moral rights, let us state emphatically that both collective bargaining and right to strike (under certain conditions, of course) exist both in the Conventions adopted by the International Labour Organisation and ratified by the Government of India, as well as in legislations such as the Industrial Disputes Act.

``Are these negated in one stroke?'', the statement said.