(MENAFN- KNN India) The Government is always open for discussions, Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment, told KNN on Bharat Bandh called by the trade unions on September 2.
In this regard the Ministry has written a letter to CITU, he added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an emergency meeting in the wake of trade unions and bank employees' strike call on September 2 (Friday).
The meeting was attended by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya.
Majority of trade unions have given a call for Bharat Bandh, a nationwide strike, on September 2 rejecting government";s request to postpone the protest.
Leading trade unions including All India Trade Unions Congress (AITUC) and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) have threatened to go on strike on September 2 bringing banks, factories and other organised sectors to a standstill across the nation.
Talking to KNN, General Secretary of CITU, Tapan Sen said that the strike will not be called off because despite continued persuasion by all the Central Trade Unions for sorting out the 12 point charter of demands involving demands of not only the workers but the entire common-folk, the Government of India adopted an arrogant non-responsive attitude while unilaterally taking one after another step towards imposing retrograde changes on the rights and working conditions of the workers, ignoring the oppositions of all the Central Trade Unions and federations including BMS.
Speaking on the labour law reforms, he said, 'The so called labour law reforms which are designed to push overwhelming majority of workers out of the coverage of basic labour laws, introduce 'hire and fire”, legitimize contractorisation of regular work and promote work at payment of less than minimum wage etc. The Government repeated its stale statement that the same will be done through tripartite consultation.”
'In this process only, Factory (Amendment) Bill was introduced in Parliament, Small Factories Bill has been given Cabinet approval, 'fixed term employment” is being introduced through executive order, Provident fund money has been parked at stock market for gambling, ESI Act is being sought be amended for replacing ESI by mediclaim products, Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill has been introduced in Parliament to impose atrocious conditions on the road-transport workers en masse,” Sen explained.
Whereas, the General Secretary of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Vrijesh Upadhyay said that it will only decide to take part in the nationwide strike after the government responds to them.
BMS General Secretary said that CITU has made September 2 is like valentine day of strike. However, he said that it is their decision and BMS have not bound to go with their decision.
He cleared that BMS is not having any affiliation with BJP whereas CITU is labour wing of CPM. (KNN Bureau)