On July 30, the Union Cabinet approved amendments to three acts — the Apprentices Act 1961, the Factories Act 1948, and the Labor Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Act 1988. Barely a week later, on August 6, two bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. The third — the Labor Laws amendment — is being introduced in the Rajya Sabha (the upper house). The Apprentices (Amendment) Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha last week.
The trade unions were up in arms immediately. “We oppose the amendments vehemently because we feel that they are against the interests of the workers,” says D.L. Sachdev, national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). AITUC is affiliated with the Communist Party of India. “The workers will be at the complete mercy of the employers,” says Tapan Sen, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). “They will be without any protection and, given the current unemployment situation in the country, the workers will become slaves of the contractors and employers.”
The Congress Party-affiliated Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) took the lead in organizing a meeting of all the prominent trade unions. Together, they claim a membership of around 100 million. The Supreme Court has limited the unions’ power by banning bandhs (total shutdowns), but the numbers give them lots of clout. The joint meeting was also attended by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade union arm of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).The unions have decided to hold a joint national convention in New Delhi in the first week of September “to intensify the nationwide agitation.” (For more on India’s labor law reforms, see this opinion piece byManish Sabharwal, founder and chairman of Bangalore-based staffing services firm Teamlease Services.)
Incidentally, the labor law amendments are not the only target of the unions. They are opposed to almost every reform initiative of the Modi government. A circular issued by Sen states: “The [union] meeting denounced the retrograde move of the government to allow 49% FDI (foreign direct investment) in the defense sector, 49% in the insurance sector and 100% in the railways, and also the government move to go for huge divestment of profit-making public sector enterprises.”
Opposition to the amendments is also building up in the Congress Party. Although the Congress has only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) against the BJP’s 282, it is flexing its muscles in the Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s upper house). The Congress has 69 seats there against the BJP’s 42; regional parties make up most of the 250-member house. The Congress was the first mover in some of these amendments; in 2012, then minister of labor and employment Mallikarjun Kharge told the Lok Sabha that on the Apprentices Act “inter-ministerial consultation has been completed and the proposal is being sent to the cabinet secretariat for consideration.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s success in attracting investments to the state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister, was largely due to labor law reforms. One of his election promises was that he would create a similar environment for the whole of India. Indeed, in Modi’s Independence Day speech on Friday, he urged global businesses to locate their factories in India. “I tell the world: Come, make in India,” Modi said. “Sell anywhere, but manufacture here.” His government has started taking small steps forward. But already considerable opposition is building up.
Courtesy: Knowlwdge. Wharton University
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