The three-day national office-bearers’ meeting of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) concluded in Udaipur on Thursday, putting forth the demand to the Union and State governments to reconstitute all tripartite Committees whose terms have expired and make them fully functional. Criticising the Centre for not convening the highest tripartite body, the Indian Labour Conference, for the past seven years, the BMS said the State governments in India have to emulate the model set by the Centre in the working of a tripartite system, but the model displayed by the Centre is very deplorable.
A resolution passed at the meeting said tripartite labour bodies were created by successive governments to supervise welfare schemes and protection from exploitation.
Explaining the decisions of the meeting, senior BMS leader Pawan Kumar told The Hindu that the tripartite system, started by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, is now on the verge of collapse as the Centre and States do not show any interest in the timely reconstitution of these mechanisms and have delayed the adoption of the recommendations of these mechanisms. “For example, the Centre’s Minimum Wage Advisory Board did not meet for eight years. Even the introductory meeting was not held. The Indian Labour Conference should have been convened every year. It was not convened after 2015,” Mr. Kumar said and added that the BMS will call for strong agitations in due course if the governments do not reconstitute these bodies.
The resolution said that at the Central government level, tripartite committees for the unorganised sector, building construction, contract labour, minimum wages, plantation, beedi workers, agriculture, ratification of ILO conventions etc., have not been reconstituted for years. “The nation is devoid of such tripartite bodies to deliberate on the working of labour welfare, important changes in labour laws, serious issues in the labour sector, etc. This is a stalemate that has not occurred in the past few decades in the history of labour,” the resolution said.
It added that tripartite bodies should strictly follow a 1:1:2 proportion as per the International Labour Organisation mandate; instead, bureaucrats and technocrats are occupying the space of workers.
The meeting also decided to hold the next national conference of the BMS in Patna on April 7-9 next year. It has also discussed the arrangements for the workers’ rally scheduled for November 17 against the sale and disinvestment of Public Sector Units.
Speaking about the protest, Mr. Kumar said corporatisation is the first step for privatisation. “We have seen this in the case of BSNL and MTNL. Public sector is important even to run the market. Public sector contributes a huge amount to the exchequer in the form of dividends. Thousand of workers will participate in the protest against the sale and disinvestment of PSUs,” he added.
BMS resolution said governments have to seriously include the concerns of the downtrodden in their priorities or otherwise it will lead to social frustrations.
