Strife-free workplace is the need of the hour: AITUC

H V Anantha Subbarao, president of Karnataka unit of All India Trade Union Congress, said, a strife-free workplace is something the country has been demanding since many years and, the industrial growth and role of trade unions have a major impact on workers.

He was speaking during a discussion on ‘Creating an Equitable and Strife-Free Workplace’, organised by the Mysuru chapter of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), here, recently. “The contribution of trade unions should be recognised for better environment and proper productivity. Unions have actually given us the great leaders, which people fail to notice. Bad practices and opportunistic practices by managements are a threat to the country. The unions have fought against many national issues and are unanimous, when they fight for certain causes. There should be transparency and faith in everyone. The managements should ensure that no employee is cheated. Hence, trade unions work for the economic, social and intellectual progress of workers,” he said.

V G K Nair, president of Centre of Indian Trade Unions, said, there is a need to communicate and debate when issues related to workers come up. “Payment of proper wages, payment of bonus, etc should be taken care of by the firms. Today, industry level wage boards have disappeared. Wage boards are constituted only for government employees. Hence, industries should decide how they can individually function, when one expects workmen not to create problems. If industrialists don’t formulate an equitable method in which these issues can be solved, nothing can change,” he said.

Smart city tag for Mysuru
CII-Mysuru chairman Arjun Ranga said, every industry should be strife-free and everyone deserves to work in a happy workplace.

Regretting that Mysuru lost a chance of being a Smart city, he said, “Mysuru should be smart as a community and also industry to grow positively.”

CII-Mysuru past chairman N Muthukumar said, India has grown widely and has also grown enormously in terms of business. “Most of us are in the organised sector, but there is a lot of exploitation in many places. We fail to focus on customer satisfaction and end up with differences among ourselves in the name of unions, workers and employers. Thus, we lose focus and competency. Several MSMEs in India have been closed down from 2015 to 2017 due to wrong management and financial practices,” he said.

“Competitiveness should come from thinking and focusing on customers, whether you are from the trade union or management of a firm. Further, one should focus on innovation, irrespective of the investment on a product. If one is manufacturing the same product even after many years, one cannot expect higher salaries. It is neither technology nor money, but the right kind of workers, for a company to do better,” he added.