Ten central trade unions on Wednesday met government representatives and demanded the four new labour laws be put on hold and consultations be held with them towards their amendment.
They described the meetings convened by the government on framing of the rules for these laws — Wednesday witnessed the last round — as a “farce” and a “camouflage” to hide the lack of consultations before the bills were passed.
A labour ministry official, however, said the rules would be finalised by the end of this month, implying the unions’ protests would have little impact.
The workers fear the new laws would facilitate a hire-and-fire policy, longer working hours and the continuation of poor pay. They accuse the government of rushing with the rules, after unilaterally pushing through the laws, under pressure from corporate houses and employers’ organisations.
Among the 10 organisations that categorically opposed the four laws were the Congress-affiliated Intuc, CPI labour arm Aituc and CPM-backed Citu. The 10 of them handed over a joint letter to labour minister Santosh Gangwar criticising the government for ignoring their suggestions before pushing the bills through.
Three other trade union bodies also attended the meeting and made recommendations about improving the laws but did not oppose them full-scale. These were the RSS trade union wing Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the National Front of Indian Trade Unions, and a pro-government faction of the Trade Union Coordination Centre.
The government had got the Code on Wages passed in 2019 and the remaining three laws in the last session of Parliament. The Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, Code of Industrial Relations, and the Code on Social Security were passed in the Rajya Sabha last September amid a House boycott by major Opposition parties on another issue.
“The government did not accept any of our suggestions when the bills were prepared and got the bills passed in the Rajya Sabha in an hour without proper discussion,” Ashok Singh of Intuc said.
Aituc secretary Amarjeet Kaur echoed him.
In their letter, the workers’ bodies accused the government of being uninterested about bipartite or tripartite discussions in accordance with the International labour Organisation conventions.
They complained that no meetings of the Indian Labour Conference had been held since 2015. The government is expected to hold the meetings once in two or three years.
“The central trade unions demand that all the four codes should be put on hold and then discussions should start with the central trade unions on each of the labour codes afresh in the true spirit of bipartite and tripartite consultations. We do not accept this meeting as consultation but a farce to camouflage consultations,” the letter said.
The BMS objected to the exclusion of contract labourers from the ambit of the labour codes, which exempt labour contractors hiring up to 50 workers in particular establishments from implementing the measures on health, safety and social security.
Some of the central trade unions have already aligned themselves with the farmers’ agitation against the new farm laws, joining them on Delhi’s borders with their own placards protesting the labour codes.