Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) congratulated the working class of the country for their militant demonstrations across the country today against the most undemocratic and authoritarian way in which the BJP government got the anti worker and anti peasant Bills passed in Parliament. Lakhs of workers participated in the protests held in more than a lakh places in all the states in the country.

In utter display of its total contempt for Parliamentary democracy, the BJP government got the three labour Bills – the Code on Industrial Relations, the Code on Social Security and the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions – in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha without the presence of opposition members. Earlier the opposition boycotted Parliament protesting against the illegal suspension of 8 MPs for exercising their right to demand division on the Farm Bills, which were also declared passed amidst chaos. It is a shame that an elected government in Parliamentary democracy shows such contempt for constitutional and democratic rights of not only common people but of the elected Members of Parliament as well.

Leaders of the central trade unions who addressed the gathering at Jantar Mantar in the national capital exposed the BJP government’s utter untruths about the labour codes benefiting the workers and its claims of taking the trade unions into confidence. The copies of the bills were torn down by the angry protesters. The central trade union leaders also reiterated their support to the all India protests by the farmers on 25^th September against the farm bills. With the passage of the labour code bills and the farm bills it has become imperative for the toiling people to unite in their full strength to fight them at the ground. The trade unions called upon all their members and the entire working class to stand in full solidarity with the peasants through physical mobilisation on 25^th September 2020.

The Farm Bills and the Labour Bills are nothing but brazen acts to push the working class into 19^th century slavery like conditions, drive our small and medium farmers into the deadly grip of the corporate agribusinesses and convert our small farmer based agriculture into corporate agriculture. These along with the whole sale privatisation of the public sector sound the death knell to our self reliant economy and our toiling people. All these are meant to serve the corporate cronies, domestic and foreign, of this BJP government.

Through their massive mobilisations despite the surging Covid, the working class have declared that they would not allow these disastrous policies to continue. They made it known that the toiling people will defy, resist and stop these anti people and anti national measures on the ground, come what may. Let the BJP government warned that powerful struggles lie ahead.

While congratulating the working class for their massive response to the call of the central trade unions, CITU exhorts them to continue the struggle on the ground. It asserts that defiance and resistance is the only way forward to reverse the anti worker neoliberal agenda of the BJP government.

Issued by: 
Hemalata
President