Pro-liberalisation policies of the Union and State governments have hit the common man hard and increased the disparities in wages, said Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) district unit secretary Balakrishna Shetty.
Improper implementation
Addressing a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner's Office, here on Monday, he said even post-graduates were getting a pittance as salary.
Besides labour laws not being implemented properly, the Centre was planning to merge 44 labour laws into four statutes.
Hence, the government had finalized a draft ‘Labour Code on Wages’ Bill, which does not provide for dearness allowance or enforcing minimum wages. But there were enough provisions for removing workers and slashing wages.
The Union government has slashed budgetary funding for welfare programmes such as mid-day meals, rural health mission and National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.Even doctors, nurses and teachers were being appointed on contract basis, which was inhuman. Efforts were on to invest the money in Employees Provident Fund in share markets which were nothing more than sophisticated gambling dens, he said.
Dearness allowance
The Congress government in the State too was following anti-labour policies.
It had not increased the dearness allowance for beedi workers.
Though the Congress had promised in its manifesto that it would regularise the services of civic workers, it had conveniently forgotten it after coming to power.
Most of the civic workers were from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. They had to spend their entire lives in financial and service insecurity.
Though there were nearly two lakh vacancies in government offices, they were not being filled, Mr. Shetty said.
K. Shankar, K. Lakshman, Rama Karkada, S. Kaviraj, Nalini, H. Narasimha, CITU leaders, were present.
