The Indian Labour Conference which happens to be the nation’s apex policy-making industrial relations tripartite body, will have a three-fold Agenda to deliberate on.

The Agenda includes:

a)Global financial downturn – its impact, job losses and comprehensive package for protection of labour force etc.
b)Problems of contract labour – social security, wages etc, and amendments in the contract labour legislations.
c)Employment generation and skill development.

The Union Labour Ministry has outlined its outlook on each item of the agenda and would like the participant central and state government representatives as well as representatives of the labour and employers to take that into account during the deliberations at the Session.

Before taking up the Labour Ministry’s notes on various Agenda items, it needs to be mentioned that the 43rd Indian Labour Conference is taking place at a time when the country’s eight major-minor central trade union organisations (CTUOs) are in the midst of a nationwide campaign on 5-point demand charter. They have decided to prepare the working people for a national March to Parliament because of Government’s irresponsive attitude.

In this backdrop, the 8 CTUOs – INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, AICCTU, UTUC – which are represented at the ILC, are expected to speak in unison to highlight the demand charter on which they are running the nationwide campaign. These issues, as highlighted a number of times in this column, include, exorbitant rise in the prices of essential commodities including foodgrains, implementation of labour laws, linkages of employment generation with stimulus packages, social security for unorganised sector workers and creation of a National Fund for this purpose and stopping of disinvestment of profit-making central public sector undertakings to meet budgetary deficit.

Of course, like other Governments’ employers’ participants, the CTUOs will be expressing their views also on the abovesaid three Agenda items. Actually, soon after the ‘inaugural session, the Conference will be split into three Conference Committees that will meet concurrently, to evolve “consensus” resolution on respective items. These consensus resolutions will be later placed before the Conference for adoption.

The Labour Ministry’s note that deserves special mention here relates to the global financial downturn and its impact on employment potential. In this respect, the Ministry has chosen to draw on the ‘Global Jobs Pact’ that was evolved during the 98th session of the International Labour Conference of the ILO in June 2009.

The Ministry note says that the Global Jobs Pact is envisaged as a policy contribution by the ILO to mitigate the impact of the crisis on working families and enterprises including the informal and rural sectors and to help in shaping a productive and sustainable recovery. It further says that Global Job Pact’s strategic objective is to place employment and labour market issues, together with social protection and respect for workers’ rights, at the heart of stimulus packages and other relevant national policies to confront the crisis, using social dialogue as a key consensus building tool.

The Ministry note, interestingly, goes a step further to say that putting employment and social protection at the core of the recovery policy will essentially require placing emphasis on the following:

i)Ensuring support and credit flow to enterprises foremost to small and medium-size enterprises;
ii)Safeguard viable jobs through skill support and to limit wasteful layoffs;
iii)Support jobseekers through well-designed unemployment benefits;
iv)Reinforce active labour market programmes to avoid the risk of long-term unemployment and social exclusion;
v)Employment guarantee programmes are effective, especially in developing countries;
vi)Young people, and in particular disadvantaged youth, require special support measure;
vii)Increase investment in employment-intensive infrastructure and public good;
viii)Invest in tomorrow’s green economy;
ix)Invest in food security and rural development;
x)Introduce or extend social protection to low-income groups and informal workers;
xi)Support for migrant workers;
xii)All countries should consult recovery policies with social partners;
xiii)Promote and protect workers rights and international labour standards;
xiv)Review of current public expenditure and its reorientation, as necessary, to prioritise employment, labour market and social protection objectives within existing budget, especially to support enterprises and workers in the private, public and social sectors, in particular, small enterprises and the informal economy.

According to “Global Jobs Pact”, if employment and social protection are to be at the core of the recovery policy, then the abovesaid measures assume strategic importance for the Governments to attend to.

The Ministry takes note of four stimulus packages given to the corporate sector over a period, on the one hand, and the six surveys of employment trends conducted by Labour Ministry’s Labour Bureau spread over a period from December 2008 to January-March 2010 spread over various States and industries. It seeks to convey the impact of stimulus packages on employment trends without saying it in so many words.

For instance, the four stimulus packages – beginning with the one on 7.12.2008 and ending with the one in Budget 2009-10 amounted Rs 2,18,000 crores.

Likewise, the first employment survey in October-December 2008 showed half of million job loss. It says the industries covered during the survey contributed more than 60 per cent to GDP. And, last (of the total six surveys) survey for the period January-March 2010 showed “overall employment increase by 0.06 million”. Though, it says, employment in textiles, transport and handloom/power sectors showed marginal decline.

This means that the Government is satisfied that its employment policy needs no change nor there is a need to link the stimulus packages with employment generation as the CTUOs have been demanding. (IPA Service)