contd from page no 1
was the regularisation of their
services as permanent workers
with all due statutory benefits.
But instead of meeting and
answering this pertinent and basic
demand, the NDA government
has chosen to hood-wink the
workers with secondary promises
rejecting the concept of perma-
nency in jobs. It success- fully
evades to address this demand of
workers and has chosen to reject
the demand of guaranteed
permanent employ- ment and job
security of workers with dubious
pretentions that FTC would help
to remove the discrimination
against contractual workers. Thus
it refutes the notion that jobs shall
be the entitlement of people.
The supporters of the system
laud this FTC rules “despite higher
costs it will entail”. Whatever might
be the trumpeting
about the
virtues of FTC by the rulers and
their henchmen, the bitter fact that
the FTC system is a legalised
stepping stone to entirely doing
away with the system of
permanent employment and job
security which every workmen is
aspiring as his natural entitlement.
This FTC system is not a new
one invented by the NDA rulers. In
Europe, employers of many
countries, to avoid the employment
protection provided for the
employees by law and to reducing
firing costs of workers have taken
recourse to FTC system.
The experience of the FTC
system shows that majority of the
employment contracts comes
under FTC to a significant level.
As a consequence of this the
employers remain reluctant to
convert FTC jobs to permanent
ones and only fewer workers are
hired as permanent workers. In
Spain around 90 per cent of all
Mar - Apr - 2018
entries into employment starts as
FTC and these workers are either
ending up getting struck in FTC or
more
frequently
become
unemployed or self employed,
rather than employed on
permanent basis. There is every
possibility that the same would be
the fate of workers in India in FTC.
Moreover FTC will have
adverse effects on permanent
workers too. The managements
will be using the FTC workers to
their advantage to suppress the
bargaining power of the permanent
workers as has been evident in
the study conducted by Radhika
Kapoor and P.P.Krishnapriya who
found that “the rising of contract
workers in India has enabled firms
to curb the bargaining power and
consequently wages of their
existing work-force. That the real
wages of directly hired workers in
the organised manufacturing
sector has remained virtually
stagnant over the last 15 years is
suggestive of this behaviour”.
These are the times that the
contract workers from various
departments have been launching
vigorous agitations for the
regularisation of their jobs and
better working conditions as has
been witnessed in the strike of
contract workers of AP Electricity
corporations and the agitation of
1500 railway apprentices that held
up rail movement in Mumbai
recently demanding for their
recruitment into railways directly
to permanent posts and doing
away with contract system of
employment. The NDA rulers in
the guise of new FTC system are
legalising the very contract
employment system.
Though the FTC system is
praised for its virtues of providing
all statutory benefits to contract
workers of FTC on par with perm-
anent workers, there is no
guarantee that the provisions of
the newly amended law will be
strictly implemented by the
employers, as has been the case
with the implementation of
previous labour laws which have
been deliberately violated by them.
The HR departments of corporate
sector are more skilful in evading
the implementation of laws under
some invented pretext or other,
raising unending litigation as has
been with the case of Maruti-
Suzuki workers.
As usual the traditional trade
union centres have expressed their
‘protest’ as a formality against
FTC. It is apparent that they are
more worried that the government
has not consulted with them about
this move before announcing in
the Union budget, than for the
actual adverse impacts of the
FTC, on the conditions of workers
in India denying their natural rights
of job entitlement, permanent
employ- ment and job security.
Instead of conducting ritual-
istic protests with formal approach
as is being done pre- sently
against anti-worker poli- cies and
attacks of our rulers, ruling
classes at the behest of big
bourgeoisie, the workers’ move-
ment of our country shall make
sincere efforts to unite, awaken
the workers consistently and pre-
pare them to fight relentlessly for
the protection of their interests with
class militancy.
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