Trade unions, including those allied to the Congress and the Left parties, have called for a nationwide hunger strike on May 22 to protest against the suspension of labour laws by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.
Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) president G Sanjeeva Reddy said representatives of different unions held a meeting on Thursday via video-conferencing and decided to go for the strike against the “draconian move”.
In a statement, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) general secretary Tapan Sen last week called upon the trade unions irrespective of their affiliations to unite and resist this “barbarous and brutal machination on the rights and livelihood” of the workers. CITU is affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a trade union affiliated to the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), too, has called for a nationwide protest on May 20 against the suspension.
Asked if they would take along the BMS, Reddy said the matter was not discussed at the meeting. “We have not approached the BMS. We have seen in the past how they were first keen to join us and later backtracked.”
The BMS has criticised the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat for freezing the labour laws, and also Rajasthan, Goa, and Odisha for increasing the working hours.
The RSS affiliate has called these changes as “unheard in history” and “rare even in most undemocratic countries”.
