#FridayProtest - Save the People, Save the Nation
How AIITEU is raising awareness every Friday about the anti-worker and anti-people policies of the BJP- ruled Union Government.
By Saubhik Bhattacharya, AIITEU
The Union Government has repealed 29 labour laws and replaced them with four labour codes in the name of ‘ease of doing business’.
Codification of labour laws by the BJP led Union Government is not meant to universalise the right of minimum wage of workers or to ensure universal coverage of all organised and unorganised workers in the social security net or to establish dynamic occupational safety regulatory framework or to strengthen dispute resolution machinery in the industrial establishment; neither is it for enabling effective participation of trade unions — as claimed by the union labour Minister. Each and every one of these claims is totally false and meant to deceive workers and the people in general.
According to the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (chapter VB), any establishment in which not less than 100 workmen were employed on an average per day working for the preceding twelve months, has to take prior permission of the appropriate government before any retrenchment, lay-off and closure. Now in the Industrial Relations Code which replaced the ID Act 1947, the government has raised the threshold to 300. More than 70% of the industrial establishments and more than 74% of the industrial workers will be subjected to an arbitrary hire and fire regime. Almost the entire workforce in private service and other establishments will be subject to this draconian provision.
The definition of worker as specified in the codes does not include any person who is employed in a supervisory capacity and drawing wages exceeding eighteen thousand rupees per month. This will exclude a large section of employees working in IT and ITeS sector who are at present covered by the labour laws.
The IR code virtually bans the right to collective action, including the right to strike, the basic rights of the working class. It imposes unrealistic conditions for the workers to go on strike. Along with this stringent punishments including huge fines and imprisonment are imposed on workers going on so called ‘illegal strikes’ and also those who ‘instigate’ them and support them.
All these 29 laws were repealed by the government with a false and fraudulent claim of subsuming the provisions of those 29 laws in the respective codes. The fact is otherwise.
Most substantive rights and protection related provisions of these 29 labour laws were either thoroughly diluted or totally removed in the respective labour codes; and more atrocious anti-worker provisions have been incorporated in the new codes.
Tech workers from the All India IT & ITeS Employees’ Union have decided to raise their voice against the anti-worker labour codes. With a slogan of ‘Scrap the Labour Codes’, AIITEU has started a series of protests tagging these actions as #FridayProtest.
“From Monday to Friday, we will work for our present; after work we will fight for our future, to ensure our rights” is the motto for the #FridayProtest.”
But by merely protesting against the labour codes, we can not compel the Union Government to repeal them and restore labour laws. We need a bigger force. The government elected by the people is clearly not working for the people. Moreover, it is selling public assets built with people’s money.
In the name of National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), the BJP led union government has decided to sell PSUs worth 6 lakh crore.
The NMP is aimed at handing over huge functional infrastructural assets of the country to private corporations and foreign multinational companies at a trivial price. Recently, Central Electronics Ltd. (CEL), a PSU under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) with Rs 2500 cr. worth of land and Rs 500 cr. worth of finished products was sold at a paltry sum of Rs 210 cr. to Nandal Finance and Leasing Pvt. Ltd.
The latest Economic Survey revealed that India ranked 179 out of 189 countries in prioritization given to health in its government budgets.
The Union government has repeatedly failed to reach it’s own target of spending 2.5% of the Gross Domestic Product on health since 2017, a year when an ambitious National Health Policy was launched. During the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Government failed to ensure the Right to Life and Health of common people. The government failed to anticipate the wave and plan for it. People have been left to their own fate.
In the 2021 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 101st out of 116 countries.
With a score of 27.5, India has a level of hunger that is pernicious despite FCI granaries overflowing with surplus grains.
The National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) job survey for 2017–18 had shown a spike in the unemployment rate to over 6 per cent, a 45-year high.
Unemployment was higher in the urban areas (7.8 per cent) as compared to rural areas (5.3 per cent). In the course of the pandemic, the unemployment situation has turned from bad to worse.
The new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) marks a leap towards neo-colonisation of Indian education via privatisation and corporatisation.
Under the NEP, foreign universities and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been allowed entry in the realm of higher education. The National Education Policy is tailored to favour those from affluent backgrounds, and discriminate against the poor and the oppressed. In fact, the BJP led union government has no intention to protect the public health and education systems.
So, the goal of our #FridayProtest will be confined not only to raising our voices against only the anti-worker policies that affect us employees, but also to create awareness against all anti-people policies of the Government, among all sections of workers and common people.
