Unions protest changes in labour laws

Tribune News Service

Shimla, July 3

Workers affiliated with various trade unions staged a demonstration here today and submitted a memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister, opposing amendments to labour laws.

Ten trade unions, including CITU, INTUC and AITUC, had given a call for a nationwide demonstration against the anti-labour amendments.

Convener of the joint forum of trade unions Kashmir Thakur, state INTUC president Baba Hardeep Singh, state AITUC president Jagdish Chandra Bhardwaj and state CITU president Vijendra Mehra addressed the protesters in front of the office of Deputy Commissioner here.

They accused the government of exploiting workers, who had been badly hit by Covid-19. Amendments to labour laws by the governments of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were in fact the beginning of the process to snatch the rights of workers, paving the way for their retrenchment and increase in their working hours, they said.

The amendment to the Factories Act 1948 gave the right to the governments to increase working hours and allow mass retrenchment of workers while the change in the Contractual labour Act 1970 had led to the exclusion of two-thirds of the workers from the ambit of 14 labour laws, they added.