CITU complains to ILO on Centre's Bill to ban strikes in defence production sector

With the government all set to get a Bill banning strikes in the defence production sector passed in Parliament, the CITU has approached the International Labour Organisation (ILO) citing that the proposed legislation is aimed at prohibiting industrial action as well as destroying trade unions in the sector.

CITU General Secretary Tapan Sen said his letter to ILO Director General Guy Ryder should be treated as a formal complaint against the actions of the government, which is "grossly violating the basic principles" of labour rights and ILO standards.

In his letter, he said, the Centre is "actively moving to privatise" the defence production sector though the Ministry of Defence had earlier acknowledged that it would not do so, prompting the unions to withdraw the strike.

However, Sen said, the government went ahead with the privatisation move later following which the workers called for a strike. It was then that the government first issued an ordinance to ban strikes and in the Monsoon Session brought the Essential Defence Services Bill, 2021, prohibiting all types of industrial actions in the sector.

"One of the reason behind calling strike or industrial dispute by the workers in defence sector are primarily due to threat of losing the job emerging out of privatisation and large threat of loss to exchequer of the government, which would no more gather profit and invest that surplus for greater need of the country," Sen said.

He said there have been recognised bipartite relations with the unions which had successfully settled several wage negotiations and other issues through dialogue but the Bill has taken "severe" recourse to "crush" industrial actions.

The letter also pointed out that Bill sought to unleash police force to arrest any person without showing any reason or without any warrant in violation of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution and UN Charter of Human Rights.