BMS announces nationwide protest on October 28 against 'anti-worker' Codes

Warning the Narendra Modi government against going forward with "anti-worker" Labour Codes, the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) on Tuesday announced a nationwide protest on October 28 against the four laws passed in Parliament.

The trade union said it was ready for a "long and continuous" agitation, including a general strike if the government does not give any heed to its demands for withdrawing the provisions in the Codes that goes against the interest of workers.

The decision was taken at the recently concluded 19th national conference of the BMS held virtually last week. A resolution was also adopted in the conference.

The Resolution No.1 passed in the conference asked the government to "immediately withdraw" the anti-worker provisions in the new Labour Codes and call a consultation meeting with BMS and other trade unions to make the Labour Codes beneficial to both worker and industry.

It also said that it resolved to hold country-wide "Warning Week" from October 10 to 16 as part of preparatory activities for the October 28 protest.

In the recently concluded Monsoon Session of the Parliament, the government had passed the Industrial Relations Code, the Social Security Code and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. The Wage Code Bill was passed by the Parliament last year.

After the three Codes were passed in the Monsoon Session, the BMS has said that the provisions were "tilted too much in favour of the employers and bureaucrats and the last minute mutilations will adversely affect industrial peace in the country".

It had then said that BMS and other trade unions have given detailed objections to the previous draft of the Industrial Relations Code but none of the objections raised by them as well as that of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour in favour of workers were considered.

Besides this, the BMS also passed five other resolutions in its conference, which included a call for a round table of stakeholders on formulating a National Employment Policy. "The imported predatory economic and labour reforms and defective policies of the capitalist paradigm are responsible for landing our job generation in a sorry state of affairs," one of the resolutions said.

The BMS also demanded the review of all pension schemes in favour of employees which included pension schemes under CCS (Central Civil Services) Rules, NPS (National Pension Scheme), financial sector schemes, EPS (employees’ pension scheme run by EPFO) and unorganised sector among others.

"It demanded pension which shall not be less than 50% of salary linked to cost of living index and medical scheme and minimum pension of Rs 5,000 for the unorganised sector," the resolution said.