Labour laws suspension and the fraud by the government

The lockdown was supposedly meant to contain Covid 19. But the Modi led BJP government has utilised it to crush the collective strength of workers and push them into conditions of slavery.

The nearly three months’ long lockdown totally failed to contain Covid, the number of cases and deaths jumping every day. It is the poor and the workers and employees including frontline workers, who are the worst affected

Grabbing powers under the National Disaster Management Act, the BJP government is suppressing democratic rights. The situation of people’s immobilisation due to lock down is unscrupulously utilised to virtually eliminate labour laws. Three BJP led state governments passed ordinances suspending most of the existing labour laws, throwing the workers to the total mercy of the employers. This is nothing but an attempt to help their corporate masters to earn more profit. Even when production and services have declined owing to the lock down, some corporates made more profits.

This is how, in capitalist democracy, a government, despite being democratically elected by people, mostly the workers in urban and rural areas, works. It has no scruples in attacking working people who are already squeezed and pauperised under the lock down, to enable the capitalists to increase their fortunes.

Labour laws are being annulled. Public sector is being eliminated. Democratic rights are being decimated. Peasant agriculture is sought to be destroyed to make way for corporate agriculture. Workers, peasants and all toiling people are sought to be pushed back into 19^th century conditions. In the name of ‘atma nirbhar’ people’s conditions are being made ‘durbhar’ in our Bharat. The country is being sold out in the name of ‘self reliance’. The five day speeches of the finance minister elaborating the so called Rs 20 lakh crore ‘relief package’ can be summed up as a process of permanently empowering the capitalist class to denude the basic entitlements of the toiling people.

This inhumanity is sought to be camouflaged by the BJP government through fraudulent means. The Union Minister of Labour & Employment told a journal that the labour laws being changed through Ordinances in some of the states will not be approved by the Central Govt. That was on 24^th May.

But, before that, on 5^th May, the Secretary of Ministry of Labour, functioning under the same Minister, wrote to all state governments to undertake labour reforms, including increasing working hours from 8 to 12, increasing threshold of employment under Industrial Disputes Act from 100 to 300, and also increase threshold of employment for applicability of Factories Act and Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Acts. All these are meant to throw majority of workers out of purview of these labour laws. This is precisely what the state governments are doing.

13 state governments have either amended or exempted labour laws, in fact applying the yet to be passed/ enforced labour codes. The BJP government did not take any measures to ensure implementation of its own directions related to the protection of jobs, wages and shelter of the workers during the lockdown period. The establishments are taking back only a small fraction of the workforce after starting operations.

The minister’s statement is nothing but a crude attempt to deceive workers; to hide the reality of bartering the lives and rights to survival of crores of workers for the profit of a handful of capitalists. Inhuman cruelty and barbarism, thy name is capitalism!

The working class will not allow these frauds and deceit to pass. They have to be exposed. These measures to impose slavery on the working class have to be collectively resisted and defied at every work place.

We, who produce the wealth of this country, keep the wheels of economy running, will not allow the sacrifices of workers who earned our existing rights by shedding their blood, go waste.

Published by Centre of Indian Trade Unions