Trade unions are gearing up for a face-off with the Government on the proposed amendments to key labour laws and FDI hike in defence, railways and insurance sectors.

To begin with, all central trade unions, including the BJP-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), will hold a ‘national protest convention’ in the first week of September.

The unions, which met here on Thursday, unanimously condemned the Narendra Modi Government’s ‘unilateral’ move to amend labour laws and also denounced the move to hike foreign direct investment in defence, insurance and railways as well as disinvestment in central public sector undertakings.

The meeting was led by G Sanjeeva Reddy of Congress-backed INTUC. Those present included: Brijesh Upadhyaya, General Secretary of BMS; Tapan Sen of CPI (M)-backed CITU; Gurudas Dasgupta, General Secretary of CPI-backed AITUC; and Harbajan Singh Sidhu, General Secretary, Hind Mazdoor Sabha.

‘Dangerous content’

In a joint statement, the unions also opposed the “dangerously anti-labour contents” of the amendments (already legislated by Rajasthan Government and moved in Parliament by the Modi Government).

“In essence, all moves of amendments in the labour laws, both by the Central Government and by the Government of Rajasthan, are aimed at empowering the employers to retrench or lay-off workers or declare closure or shut-down at will and also resort to mass scale contractorisation,” said the joint statement.

The unions fear these moves would push out over 70 per cent of the industrial establishments in the country and their workers out of the purview of almost all labour laws, thereby allowing the employers a free hand to further squeeze and exploit workers.

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