The Labour Ministry has received a boost with the appointment of Minister of State for Labour, Harish Rawat. Both Mr. Kharge and Mr. Rawat are busy working out the priorities of the Labour Ministry.

Apparently, these priorities are in tune with the policy projections contained in President Pratibha Patil's Address to the joint session of Parliament. The President had said, “Over 50 per cent of our population is below 25 years of age and their creative energy is our greatest strategic resource.” Having underlined this, she said, “The challenge is to invest in their education, employability and employment.”

“India has the capacity to contribute to a fourth of the global workforce if it invests in skill development of its youth,” the President said and significantly added, “Education which provides employable skills holds the key for equal opportunities for the Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Minorities.” She had also said that besides massive investment in education, the Government would “focus on skill development initiative that has commenced operation with the very ambitious goal of education of 500 million skilled people by 2022 so that we realise the demographic dividend.”

The skill development should require development of indigenous industry on a large scale, providing employment to the upcoming skilled labour force. The Labour Department should also be streamlined to ensure enforcement of a minimum of labour laws. Unfortunately, enforcement of labour laws has been a casualty in recent years due to the unhealthy impact of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Moreover, the global crisis has its own impact in the markets of developed countries where workers are getting restive against outsourcing of jobs by multinationals.

In this backdrop, the Government's project of developing a National Employment Policy will have to be watched. India should not appear like a country out to market its labour as a commodity.

Labour Minister Kharge mentioned yet another issue on the Ministry's priority list: Bringing amendments to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Act and the Employees State Insurance (ESI) Act “to cover all establishments with 10 or more employees instead of the existing threshold of 20 employees.” This is not a new issue nor an innovation on the part of the UPA regime. The issue of extending social security measures to all segments of the unorganised workers was continuously under discussion during the previous UPA regime but was resisted by both the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission on the plea of paucity of resources. It was then that the oldest member of the EPF Central Board of Trustees (CBT) and AITUC vice-president Parduman Singh had suggested that establishments without power, with 10 employees instead of the existing threshold of 20 employees should be covered under the EPF Act. This would provide minimum social security to another 4 to 5 crore workers, he had calculated. This was not approved by the Government.

On the contrary, the UPA Government, during the fag end of Parliament's 2004-09 term, rushed through Parliament the Social Security Bill for Unorganised Workers without providing any schedule of schemes to be enforced or creating any Special Fund for it as has been recommended by the Arjun Sengupta Commission for Unorganised Enterprises. The trade unions described this law as a meaningless device of the Manmohan Singh Government, adopted only keeping in view the elections to the 15th Lok Sabha.

The problem is that the proposal now being mooted to amend the EPF Act so as to enlarge coverage has come when the backdrop has completely changed. For one thing, the Central Government has stopped accepting any more EP Funds into the Finance Ministry's Special Deposit Scheme (SDS); initially, SDS used to give 12 per cent interest, later it reduced it to 10 per cent and then to 8 per cent. EPFO was being asked to choose the share market option.

The sordid story of the Finance Ministry under P. Chidambaram forcing the EPFO to appoint private sector fund managers having also foreign linkages is well known. The trade unions' proposal to appoint besides the SBI other public sector banks as fund managers was rejected. The Government refused to give any guarantee of security of the EPF deposits. Everything has to depend on the market forces. It is against this backdrop that that the new proposal to amend the EPF Act is being given priority to extend coverage.

The functioning of the EPFO is under strain, too. A report in a national daily says that the number of EPF claims has been steadily increasing - from 69.5 lakh in 2006-07 to 76.4 lakh in 2007-08 and then to 101.0 lakh in 2008-09. Meanwhile, the pending claims have shown a four-fold increase in this period: from 18.5 lakh to 56.1 lakh and then to 74.0 lakh in the corresponding years. (Hindustan Times - May 29, 2009.)

According to the Minister, the coverage of all “BPL workers” under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) within three years is also being taken up on a priority basis. The RSBY already covers the building workers. The Minister said it is also proposed to cover other above poverty line (APL) workers in the unorganised sector.

The question of enforcement of laws like the Minimum Wages Act, the Workmen Compensation Act, the Equal Wage for Equal Work Act in the fast-spreading Special Economic Zones (SEZs) remained out of focus at the meeting between the Ministers and press persons. It was at least expected of the media to raise these vital issues for clarification from the Ministers.. They did not. SEZs are going to be industrial relations battleground in the coming period.

“Few Takers for the New Pension Scheme” — this is how the INTUC fortnightly “Indian Worker” (June 16-30, 2009) described the performance of the new pension scheme being managed by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). It could, so far, manage to attract only 350 subscribers, Started on this May Day for private and unorganised sector workers, the Authority has spent over Rs 10 million on two print advertisements. It is expecting additional funds from the Budget and hopes to launch a “high-decibel” marketing campaign. Lack of awareness among the people is stated to be the reason for the lack of response to the Pension Scheme.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed to have drawn a valuable lesson in the last year of his last term when he said that inclusive growth cannot be achieved without inclusive governance. This lesson seems to have been forgotten. It is not only in the case of NPS, the case study of most welfare schemes having no legal backing would come to the same conclusion. Dependence on bureaucratic network in such cases results in poor performance, corruption, etc. It may be different if and when corporate interests are involved.

A case of patent misrepresentation crept into the President's Address to the Joint session of Parliament where she said, “Government was also able to effect pay revision for its employees including defence personnel, public sector employees and teachers in colleges.” Out of the 16 lakh public sector employees only 3 lakh public sector 'executives and non-unionised supervisors' earned pay revision on the basis of a Government-appointed Commission's recommendations. The remaining 13 lakh PSU employees are still waiting for long-delayed pay revision negotiations to start. Only coalmen's unions jointly forced the Coal Managements to relent and agree on the issue of 5-year term for any wage settlement instead of 10 years as was directed by the Bureau of Public Enterprises The coalmen's unions had given a call for a three-day nationwide strike.

One hopes the Government will ensure that public sector wage negotiations are not further delayed. This will be a good step by the Government making amends for allowing such a discrepancy to creep into the Presidential Address to Parliament. (IPA)