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Trade unions to meet to oppose economic reforms

Leaders of major Indian trade unions will meet in Calcutta on Friday to formulate a strategy to oppose the government's economic reforms programme, particularly its policies relating to retrenchment.

"Reforms have worsened the condition of the workers and left them completely at the mercy of employers," a senior leader of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, Chittabrata Mazumdar, told Reuters. CITU is India's biggest leftist trade union.

"Retrenchment has been made easier than ever before with the laws totally tilted to suit the employer," he added.

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had unveiled in his 2001-2002 Budget (April-March) a set of labour reforms granting flexibility to employers to lay off surplus staff.

Sinha said firms employing up to 1,000 workers would no longer need government approval to discharge workers. Previously, only firms with fewer than 100 workers were allowed to lay off people without government consent.

Unions say most workers run the risk of being laid off without adequate safeguards if the government implements the proposal because more than 80 per cent of the industrial workforce is employed by firms with less than 1,000 employees.

"There will be no labour left," Mazumdar said.

The meeting of trade unions, which begins at 1600 hrs (IST), will see Left-backed and rightist trade unions joining hands against the central government's "anti-labour" policies.

The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, an offshoot of the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, will also attend.

India began an ambitious economic reforms programme in 1991 aimed at transforming the world's second most populous country into an economic powerhouse.

But 10 years later, some politicians and labour leaders say the reforms have not improved the lot of the poor, many of whom still live on less than a dollar a day.

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