The Centre of Indian Trade Unions denounced the unilateral move of the Govt of India to amend the Trade Union Act 1926 in the name of bringing about so called “transparency” and avoiding “duplicacy” as noted the press briefing by Union Cabinet.

But the text of the amendment, as available with the Central Trade Unions reveals the dubious intent of the Govt to usurp wide discretionary power with the Govt in the matter of recognition to central trade unions in total departure from existing mutually agreed practices being followed for last couple of decades, based on which verification of membership of central trade unions have been conducted number of times during last three decades. All the ten central trade unions jointly conveyed their opposition to the said Bill and also conveyed specific suggestions for changes on 10th August 2018. But none of the suggestions of the central trade unions has been accepted.

Central Trade Unions are confederations of the enterprise based registered trade union entities, which represent the workers in various tripartite or bipartite forums. Definition of the Central Trade Unions or eligibility of being considered as Central Trade Unions had already been unanimously formulated in joint meeting of the Central Trade Unions and the Union Labour Ministry on the basis of a minimum membership (to be jointly decided from time to time by similar joint meeting between the CTUOs and the Ministry of Labour & Employment) and spread over in four states. The proposed Amendment Bill has not deliberately incorporated this unanimously agreed formulation being followed from the very beginning and instead proposed “as may be prescribed” thereby usurping discretionary power with the Govt in the matter of procedure of recognition of central trade unions. Instead of so called “transparency” the Govt has been trying to retain arbitrary power in their hands in order to interfere in the trade union functioning. Already the dubious intent of the Govt stood thoroughly exposed in the manner the Govt has arbitrarily debarred the biggest central trade union in the country, Indian National Trade Union Congress(INTUC) representation in the tripartite committees including the Indian Labour Conference. All the ten central trade unions in the country opposed such proposal of the Govt.

Secondly, while the BJP Govt has been showing keenness in re-writing the procedure of recognizing central trade unions, they remain absolutely negative in making the employer mandatorily recognizing the trade unions at the enterprise level. As a result in many workplaces throughout the country, particularly in private sector, workers are being victimized only for forming their trade unions as had happened in Maruti-Suzuki in Manesar, Haryana and the latest of such incident has been in Yamaha in Tamilnadu. Numerous struggles are going on only on the demand of recognition of trade unions in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan and other states. Existing law empowers the employer not to deal, if they like, with the trade union at the enterprise/workplace level, even if there is a single union. The entire trade union movement has been demanding since long the statutory provision of mandatory recognition of the trade unions at the enterprise level. But the proposed amendment bill totally ignored said long standing demands of the trade union movement thereby allowing their corporate masters to play ducks and drakes with the basic trade union rights of the workers.

The proposed Trade Union (Amendment) Bill 2018 as cleared by the Cabinet of Narendra Modi is the integral part of its package of so called “Labor Law Reforms” including the four code Bills repealing existing 44 labour laws, which is thoroughly designed with dubious articulation to impose conditions of slavery on the working people and totally abrogate trade union rights. All the trade unions in the country, barring the Govt-sponsored one led by RSS, rejected the proposed Bill with contempt it deserves and are determined to resist the pro-corporate changes in labour laws through united action. The working people of the country are going to demonstrate their contempt through the forth coming countrywide two days general strike on 8-9 January 2019 in a massive way.(Courtesy: Ganashakti)