CITU alleges center govt to amend Trade Unions Act for granting recognition

Left-backed labour union CITU on Thursday came down heavily on the Centre's move to amend the Trade Unions Act and accused the BJP government of redrafting the procedure of granting recognition to central trade unions.

The Trade Unions (Amendment) Act, 2018 is "thoroughly designed with dubious articulation to impose conditions of slavery on the working people and totally abrogate trade union rights", the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) said in a statement.

The CITU alleged that the proposed amendments reveal the government's dubious intent in a total departure from existing mutually-agreed practices being followed for the last couple of decades. It pledged to raise the issues during its countrywide two-day general strike on January 8 and 9.

The Narendra Modi Cabinet had on Wednesday approved amendment to the Trade Unions Act, 1926, to make provisions regarding recognition of trade unions. The present Act provides for only registration of trade unions and there is no provision for recognition of unions.

The CITU said the BJP government had been showing keenness in rewriting the procedure of recognising central trade unions. "They remain absolutely negative in making the employer mandatorily recognizing the trade unions at the enterprise level."

As a result, it said, in many workplaces across the country, particularly in the private sector, workers were being victimised only for forming their trade unions -- as had happened in the Maruti Suzuki case in Manesar, Haryana, and recently in Yamaha case in Tamil Nadu last year.

The existing law empowers the employer not to deal, if they like, with the trade union at the workplace level even if there is a single union, it said. The proposed amendment bill totally ignored the long-standing demands of the trade union movement, thereby allowing corporate masters to play with the basic rights of workers, the CITU alleged. It added that numerous struggles were going on only on the demand of recognition of trade unions in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan and other states. 

(With inputs from agencies.)