Send Industrial Relations Code Bill to parliamentary committee on labour: AITUC

New Delhi, Nov 30 () All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) on Saturday demanded that the government should send the Industrial Relations Code Bill to a parliamentary standing committee before passing it hurriedly.

Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar introduced the bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday amid protest by the opposition parties.

"AITUC demands that the bill be referred to the Parliamentary Committee on Labour, where the trade unions should be heard, before passing it hurriedly, as done with the Code on Wages," the union said in a statement.

It said that all the changes that the government was trying to bring in under the guise of amalgamating 44 labour laws, either take away the existing rights of the workers, or make them more stringent for the workers, and they have been unanimously opposed by all the Central Trade Unions in India.

"But the government has simply ignored the view point of the trade unions," it said.

It is obvious that the government is acting at the behest of their corporate masters, it said.

"This kind of ease of doing business is no way to get the sluggish economy moving. What is required is to urgently put money in the hands of the workers, by strengthening MNREGA...," it added.

RSS-affiliate Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) too has demanded that the government should send the Industrial Relations Code Bill to a parliamentary standing committee for a redraft as certain provisions are against the interest of workers.

In a separate statement, AITUC made a very strong objection to the statement of Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad that the contractual workers in BSNL and MTNL should fend for themselves as they are on the rolls of the contractors and not on that of the BSNL and MTNL.

The reply of the minister in Rajya Sabha on November 28 "smacks of arrogance and is made in utter disregard to the laws of the land". RR BAL