New Delhi, December 10
The Indian Labour Conference, which concluded today, failed to produce any major breakthrough in the much talked about labour reforms as the employers and the workers struck to their rigid stance.
Only semblance of agreement was the setting up of a tripartite working committee to prepare the final draft for preparing the social security legislation for unorganised sector.
The ILC said all unorganised workers, including home-based, wage workers, migrant workers and self- employed workers whose average monthly earnings do not exceed Rs 6,500 per month should be covered.
It said floor-level social security schemes like life and accident cover, health insurance and maternity benefit should be funded by the Central Government.
The ILC said administrative and infrastructure expenditure under the proposed legislation should also be borne by the Central Government for initial five years. It called for designing of social security schemes prior to introduction of the legislation.
The other recommendations included setting up of tripartite Social Security Boards at the Centre and in the states/UTs to formulate/ review the schemes under the legislation.
In order to promote better industrial relations, the ILC approved the proposal to set up Grievance Redressal Authority with certain changes. It commented that every industry/establishment employing 50 or more workmen must have one or more grievance redressal committees, which should consist of equal number of representatives from the management and the workers.
With regard to Amendment of the Section 2-A of the ID Act, the ILC said the Central Government should be the ‘appropriate government’ in respect of Central Public Sector Undertakings and state governments should be the appropriate government in respect of State PSUs. However, it did not agree to the proposal that the Central Government should be the appropriate Government in respect of the disputes of national importance.
The proposed amendment to extend time period from six months to three years in respect of declaring any industry as public utility service was supported by representatives of employers and state Governments.
However, trade unions representatives did not agree to it. There was a consensus at the conference to empower tribunals under the ID Act to enforce the award/order given by them as a decree of civil court.
The conference agreed to direct reference of disputes connected with termination, dismissal, retrenchment, discharge to Industrial Tribunals. The trade unions did not endorse the proposal to amend provisions of the Chapter V-B of ID Act to raise the number filter of workmen employed in an establishment to 300 from the present 100.
However, the employers’ representative supported the proposed change.
