Friday, November 30, 2018
BO CSI - Day to day Operations Flow Chart
1.Power on the device and wait for 15min for network searching.
2. Login using Biometric
3. Day Begin
Demo booking > Day Begin > Confirm today’s date and click on OK
4. Bag Open
Dell Apps > Bag Open > Scan Bag Barcode > Receive all Articles > Click on OK > Scan BO Slip > Click on OK > Receive Cash,Stamp,Document and Submit
5.Invoice emo to GDS MD
Dell Apps > Invoice > Click on Scanner Icon and enter number of emos to be scanned > Scan one by one emos
6.Cash to GDS MD
Dell Apps > Click three lines on top > Select Cash > Cash to GDS MD > Select eMO > Submit
7.Book Counter Transactions like RL,Parcel,Speed,eMO, ePayment, SB Transactions,PLI-RPLI Transactions.
8.eMO and Article Delivery
Dell Apps>Select the article type>Untick All--.Tick one by one delivered articles and click on submit
9. eMO and Article Returns
Dell Apps > Select eMO/Registered Letter/Registered Parcel/Speed Post. Click on Returns and enter remarks for articles one by one
10.Cash return from Postman
Dell Apps > Click three lines on top > Select Cash > Cash From GDS MD > Select eMO > Submit
Same step is to be repeat if there are COD or VP. Article type to be select as Letter or Parcel
11.CBS PLI Tool
Demo Booking > CBS / PLI > Enter the head wise transactions and click submit
12.Day End
Demo booking > Day End > Confirm today’s date and click on OK
13.Daily Account generation
Demo Booking > BODA Report > Request required cash for next day > Accept Liability or send excess cash > Enter Cash Bag Weight > Daily account can be viewed > Click on print.
14.Bag Close
Dell Apps > Bag Close > Click on Fetch Articles >
//COPY//-POTOOLS
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
AIPEU-GDS : LETTER TO SECRETARY POSTS
No.AIPEU-GDS/Strike/2018 Dt.26-11-2018
To
The Secretary
Department of Posts
Dak Bhawan
New Delhi – 110 001
Respected Sir,
Sub:- Non-settlement of GDS demands – Two days strike with Postal JCA –
Reg.
I would like
to draw your kind attention on the following issues of GDS. The entire GDS
employees are very much agitated on the non-settlement of GDS demands for the
last 4 months. Implementation of positive recommendations of Shri Kamalesh
Chandra Committee made partial and so many other positive recommendations are
yet to be implemented. Regarding the drawal of Combined Duty Allowance,
Composite Allowance and Risk & Hardship Allowances are kept pending in many
divisions for seeking necessary clarifications from the Directorate. Membership
verification in GDS cadre has been stopped arbitrarily. Non-availability of proper net work
connection in rural areas became tedious in the operation of RICT devices in
BOs including IPPB. Drawl of benefit from SDBS to retired GDS even after 5-6
years became farce. Repeated requests to the administration through various forums
became in vain.
In this
background, we have no other option except to conduct a serious trade union
action and AIPEU-GDS is decided to go
for two days strike on 8th & 9th January 2019 along
with Postal JCA (NFPE & FNPO) demanding to settle the following issues in favour of GDS.
1.Implement all positive
recommendations of Shri Kamalesh Chandra Committee and grant civil servant
status to GDS.
2.The recommendations of the
GDS Committee should be implemented from 01-01-2016 regarding new wage scale
for calculation of arrears.
3.All the recommendations on
retirement benefits to GDS should be implemented from 01-01-2016. Consider
perusal about the drawal of benefits from SDBS to the retired GDS in waiting
since Jan, 2014.
4.Justified scale fixation to
be granted to senior GDS as there are some anomalies while fixing the new wage
scale caused drawal of lesser wage and meager benefit compared with new
entrants.
5.Bring GDS under the purview
of Gratuity Act as recommended by the GDS Committee up to Rs.5.00 laks w.e.f
01-01-2016.
6.Issue orders on the
following recommendations as ensured in the minutes of the meeting
dtd.31-07-2018 with GDS unions.
(a) Children Education
Allowance
(b) Emergency leave to GDS
(c) Accumulation of Paid Leave
to a maximum of 180 days
(d) Insurance Scheme
(e) Limited transfer facility
(f) Voluntary discharge scheme
(g) Qualifying service for
LDCEs.
7.Restart the process of
membership verification in GDS cadre as it was arbitrarily cancelled.
8.Combined Duty Allowance, Composite
Allowance, Risk & Hardship Allowance should be granted to GDS as per the
recommendations of the GDS Committee without any modification.
9.All vacant posts of
Departmental cadres viz., MTS, Postman, MG allotted to the GDS should be filled up as and when the vacancy
arises every year keeping
in view of the age of GDS and cut-off date of the examination.
Conditions like 3yrs / 5yrs minimum service may be relaxed and allow the
suggestions made by the GDS Committee. Condition of possessing Driving License
at the time of examination may also be relaxed.
10.Fill up all vacant posts in
GDS cadre to avoid combination of duties in the back ground of RICT & IPPB
rolled out in BOs.
11.Grant Pension to the
promoted GDS to the Departmental cadres based on Supreme Court Judgement in SLP
No. (C) 13042 of 2014.
12.Proper net work
availability should be made in all rural areas after introduction of DARPAN in
BOs.
13.Grant funds to draw all
kinds of incentives liable to GDS viz., MNREGS, DBT Schemes, PLI/RPLI etc.,
pending for years in all Circles.
14.Necessary changes may be
made in Rule-3A of GDS (C&E) Rules, 2011 in case of Rule-3A (i),(ii),(iii),(vii)&(ix)
in favour of GDS in the changed pattern of working conditions in the BOs
besides the recommendations of the GDS Committee.
15. Introduce Medical
treatment facility to GDS as suggested by the GDS Committee.
Yours sincerely,
(P.Pandurangarao)
General Secretary
Government Brought Most Public Authorities Under RTI Act
The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh stated here today that in the last four and half years, the government led by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has brought most of the public authorities under the purview of the RTI act, which is in keeping with the commitment to ensure maximum transparency in the working of these institutions. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoP&T), which is the nodal department for the Right to Information and Central Information Commission, has so far successfully covered nearly 2000 public authorities under the RTI Act, he said.
Dr Jitendra Singh made these observations when the outgoing Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), Shri R.K. Mathur called on him today.
Lauding the achievements of the last over four years, Dr Jitendra Singh said, when the government came in, there were very few public authorities under the purview of RTI Act, but a fast - track process was initiated to make the RTI more effective and more inclusive.
In addition, Dr Jitendra Singh noted that the filing of RTI has been made much more convenient and easy with the use of latest technology. There is now a portal and an App, as a result of which, any citizen can file an RTI from his mobile phone, at any time of the day or night, and from anywhere.
The disposal time of the RTI application received in the Central Information Commission has been drastically reduced, said, Dr Jitendra Singh, and added that the pendency has also considerably reduced in comparison to what it was before 2014.
In the DoP&T, Dr Jitendra Singh said, we have tried to sincerely live up to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s commitment of maximum governance with minimum government, maximum transparency and maximum citizen-participation. He said, there has also been a successful effort to compile inputs from the various RTIs received, in order to prepare research manuals for planning future strategies and improve upon the existing methodologies.
.................
BB/NK/PK
(Release ID :185941)
PIB
Monday, November 26, 2018
‘Hire and Fire’ without Changing Laws ... Tapan Sen
Conspiracy to Impose
Slavery on Working Class;
‘Hire and Fire’ without Changing Laws
Tapan Sen
November 2018
The BJP government at the Centre, right from the day it assumed office, has been working overtime to empower the employers’ class with the unbridled right to “hire and fire” workers at their will through various routes. Its sole motive is to impose the conditions of slavery on the working people of the country who actually produce the GDP, generate resources for the national exchequer and also generate profit for the employers.
“Ease of doing business” is the central focus of the Modi government. In the process, weakening and finally eliminating trade unions at workplaces is the main objective. Continuing loot on the workers and their rights is itsmodus operandi.
Attempts of Hire & Fire & Resistance
Had there been no workers, there would have been no production of goods and services and, therefore, no profit. But, under capitalist regime, these workers are being squeezed and exploited most. As the crisis of the capitalist system deepens and aggravates, such exploitation becomes more atrocious, more heinous and more blood-sucking.
The attempts to introduce the system of “hire and fire” have been going on since the onset of the neoliberal policies. Successive governments at the Centre and in many states made hell-bent efforts to change the labour laws. The proposal to change the Industrial Disputes Act to allow employers in all establishments, employing up to 300 workers, to retrench workers or declare closure without government’s prior permission had been initiated in the mid nineties itself. These comprise more than 70% of the industrial establishments in the country employing more than 78% of the industrial workforce. But that could not be achieved by the government owing to consistent united resistance by the trade union movement of the country. In fact, latest proposal of the Modi government on Code on Industrial Relations Bill also pressed for the same proposals on “hire and fire” i.e. complete freedom to employers’ class to retrench workers at their will, which even the Modi sponsored trade union centre could not endorse publicly.
The united movement of the working class in the country which is getting consistently and continuously widened in the process of countrywide struggles could successfully stall such retrograde move changing the labour laws for introducing “hire and fire” till now.
Contractorisation and Casualisation Route
In this background, the governments, led by BJP, have resorted to most dubious means of circumstantially empowering the employers’ class to retrench workers at their will even without changing legal framework through innovative as well as satanic administrative measures. The ground for such aggressive onslaught of “hire and fire” has been set through widespread contractorisation and casualisation of labour which got additional momentum since the inception of neoliberal policy regime in early 1990s itself. It is not that prior to 1990s contract system was not there. But such contract work had been prevalent mainly in peripheral and supportive jobs in most of the establishments and not that much in core operational jobs. And even in those peripheral jobs, particularly those of permanent and perennial nature, deployment of contract workers was continuing illegally in violation of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act 1970, with the direct indulgence of the concerned governments. Even in that situation, wherever the contract workers could be organised in trade unions and struggles could be conducted, they could be regularised in many industries till mid 1980s.
But since 1991 onward, such unlawful deployment of contract workers even in core operational jobs of the establishment proliferated in a big way through active indulgence of the government machineries reaching almost an explosive proportion of the total workforce by now. Even the Supreme Court Judgment put hurdles on regularisation of contract workers deployed in permanent and perennial nature of jobs as per the law of the land. As per official estimates (Employment -Unemployment Survey conducted by Labour Bureau under the Labour Ministry-2015-16) 46.6% of the workforce were found to be self employed, as per Usual Principal Status Approach followed by 32.8% as casual labour. Only 20.7% are wage/salaried workers including contract workers. As per the same survey report, 64.9% of the wage/salaried workers and 67.8% of the contract workers and 95.3% of the casual workers do not have any written job contracts (and/or appointment letters).This itself reveals the extremely temporary character of employment of majority of the wage/salaried workers in the country. The same report also revealed that 67.5% of the self-employed (46.6% of the total workforce) have an average monthly income up to Rs 7500, 57.2% of wage/salaried workers have a monthly income up to Rs.10,000 and 38.5% of the contract workers and 59.3% of the casual workers have a monthly income of up to Rs 5000. The entire findings of the Survey Report clearly reveal that overwhelming majority of the country’s workforce in industries and services are on contract, only a small proportion are on regular permanent employment. Even among the majority of self-employed, contract system is in operation in hidden form.
Annual Survey of Industries and also the reports published by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy brought forth industry specific details of contract work. According to these reports, petroleum sector accounts for 56.21% contract workers out of its total workforce, basic metal (steel, aluminium etc) 46.5%, automobile including trucks and trailers 45.95%, tobacco products 72.83%, pharmaceuticals and chemicals 47.19%, non-metallic minerals 60.37% etc. Of these the public sector itself accounts for around 50% contract workers out of the total workforce and the private sector entities are employing around 70% of its total workforce as contract workers of different hues.
The alarming extent to which workers are being severely exploited through contract system is thus clear. In public sector industries, contract workers are generally being paid less than one tenth of the wage of the regular workers despite doing the same and similar work, not to speak of other benefits. In private sector, contract workers’ wage is well below 50% of the wages being paid to regular workers. Majority of the contract workers are deprived of any social security benefits despite being legally entitled for the same. But the very temporary nature of service as contract workers, keeping them under constant threat of retrenchment, does not allow the contract workers to demand such benefits to which they are legally entitled.
Not only that. The clear stipulation of the section 25 of the Rules framed under Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act 1970 providing for payment of same wages as regular workers to the contract workers for doing the same and similar jobs is not being implemented by the concerned governments subjecting the contract workers to severe exploitation.
New Routes for “Ease of Doing Business”
It is in this background of extreme vulnerability of employment relations of majority of country’s workforce even in the organised sector itself, that the present BJP government has been introducing measures one after another to virtually empower the employers’ class with the complete right to “hire and fire” at will. This is being done in their anxiety to ensure so called “ease of doing business”.
First, Outsourcing
The first is to allow employers to deploy of contract workers in regular jobs through different nomenclatures viz., outsourcing, job contracts, commercial contracts etc. It is argued that no contractor has been engaged for doing the jobs but the entire work has been outsourced to another agency for a price; so the principal employer has no responsibility over the workers working in the outsourced agencies, although they are actually working for the principal employer. Thus these workers are sought to be thrown out of the purview of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act 1970 and principal employers, mostly the large corporates are completely freed from their statutory obligations. There are numerous cases where the labour departments, both in the centre and the states refused to entertain or attend complaints or industrial disputes raised by the workers of the outsourced agencies on violation of the Contract Labour (R&A) Act.
Second, Fixed Term Employment
Second, introduction of the system of “fixed term employment” through amendment of the Rules under Industrial Employment Standing Order Act through executive order has opened the floodgate of employment of temporary workers in all organised sector establishments, both in public and private sectors. The fixed term employment was first introduced during the earlier BJP regime in 2002 despite vehement opposition by all the trade unions in the country. Subsequently, owing to consistent pressure and persuasion by the trade union movement, the UPA government had to rescind the notification on “fixed term employment in 2007. But again, after the new incarnation of the BJP government under Narendra Modi this atrocious provision has again been introduced in 2017 ignoring the opposition of the entire trade union movement. As per this provision the employers will be allowed to employ workers for a fixed term say 6 months or one year and after the completion of the tenure those workers can be retrenched without any notice and compensation, unless their tenure is renewed for another fixed term. This has introduced further fragility in the employment relations keeping the concerned workers under constant threat of retrenchment or non-renewal of their tenure.
Although as per rules, workers on fixed term employment are eligible for the same wage as the regular workers in the concerned establishment, the temporary nature of their employment and consequent fear of jobloss do not allow them to demand the same enabling the employers to take advantage of the situation. This phenomenon is prevalent even in public sector companies. Employees of Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, who are all on fixed term employment since last 15 years or so through periodic renewal of their terms, have been getting much less wages and benefits than the Air India employees. Similar examples are there in other PSUs and private companies as well. Even in a PSU like ONGC, highly skilled workers in on-shore and off-shore exploration jobs are being deployed on “fixed term employment”. And, after notification of “fixed term employment” last year, reports are being received from many states on private sector units aggressively resorting to this route of fixed term employment while simultaneously retrenching regular workers on one plea or the other.
Third, NEEM & NETAP
The latest move of ‘temporarising’ the employment pattern for greater exploitation of labour is through engagement of apprentices in a big way. The amendment to the Apprentices Act along with introduction of the National Skill Development Programme titled National Employability Enhancement Mission (NEEM) and National Employment Through Apprenticeship Programme (NETAP) is another gift by the BJP government led by Modi to its corporate bosses. These schemes are being introduced under the camouflage of loud slogans of improving and advancing the skill-level of country’s youth to ensure greater employability. But in practice, they are sinister designs to get the workers’ jobs done by apprentices, without any obligation to retain or pay them right wages and social security benefits and, thereby, make a savings of the employers on labour cost. As is already being witnessed in various industries, apprentices are being utilised as workers on the production lines year after year denying them all benefits of regular workers. Most of the MNCs are now availing this route of brazen exploitation. Other private majors have also started making use of this instrument to accentuate exploitation of workers.
The Project “Ease of Doing Business”
The picture is becoming abundantly clear. The entire project of so called “ease of doing business” is practically aimed at more severe exploitation and loot on labour who actually keeps the wheel of production and services running. There is no programme for making power, transport and other industrial raw-materials and inputs cheaper for the business and industries since all those areas are separate profit centres for the same private corporate. Hence exploitation of labour is main life-line of their project of “ease of doing business”.
The BJP government has been working overtime to facilitate such inhuman exploitation and extraction of sweat and blood of labour without any hurdles. Their aim is not to allow the workers to organise in unions and also weaken the trade union movement through introducing extreme heterogeneity in the composition of workforce within every workplace viz.,
Handful of regular workers, larger number of contract workers, fixed term employees and apprentices – all doing the same jobs with widely divergent and different wage and service conditions.
It is a criminal conspiracy that through this process they want to impose conditions of slavery on the entire workforce.
Part of Neoliberal Drive
This criminal conspiracy of imposing slavery on the working people flows from the working of the crisis ridden neoliberal capitalist order. Hence our fight must be directed against the very exploitative neoliberal policies and their political operators at the helm of governance, whosoever it may be. At this juncture it is the RSS led BJP government at the centre and in most of the states. This criminal conspiracy must be thoroughly exposed and squarely defeated by the working class movement.
Forward to 2 Days Strike to Defeat Design of Imposing Slavery
The two days’ countrywide strike on 8-9 January 2019 called by the united platform of trade unions is aimed at cementing the unity and determination of the working class to mount stout resistance to this conspiracy and oust the conspirator class in the governance decisively.
Designs of imposing slavery on the workers and the people will not pass!
Employment Generation – A Major Issue of the General Strike on 8-9 January 2019
= Hemalata
‘Where is my job?’ This is the question troubling the minds of hundreds of lakhs of young people across the country. They want concrete answers from the government on just one of the many pre poll promises made by Modi and his BJP in 2014 to attract the young and get their votes. But, the Modi government acted deaf.
What is the employment situation in the country today, when the BJP led government is at the fag end of its tenure?
During the Parliament elections in 2014, BJP promised that, if voted to power, it would provide 2 crore jobs every year. After coming to power the Modi government has embarked upon an illusion creating spree of announcing various programmes – ‘Make in India’, ‘Skill India’, ‘Start Up India’, ‘Digital India’, ‘Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY)’ etc and etc, which it claimed would generate employment.
How many jobs did these schemes and programmes really generate? Let us just look at a few newspaper reports that show a highly disturbing situation.
· 1.9 crore appeared for the Railway Recruitment Board exam to fill 62907 posts, mostly of gang men, gatemen, helpers in electrical and mechanical departments. A large number of them were postgraduates.
· 23 lakhs applied for 400 class IV jobs in UP. 50000 of them were graduates
· 25 lakhs appeared for the exam for 6000 class IV jobs in West Bengal; many of them were graduates and post graduates
· More than 2 lakhs appeared for 1137 posts of police constables in Mumbai. While the basic qualification was 12th standard, 543 were postgraduates and 425 were engineering graduates
Many more similar instances can be cited: engineers driving auto rickshaws, MBAs working as shop attendants, post graduates as servers in restaurants etc. They are not doing these jobs for fun. They are compelled to take up such low paying jobs, despite their high educational qualifications, because they could not find suitable and better jobs.
Most probably, many of the lakhs of educated youth are also selling ‘pakodas’ as suggested by the Prime Minister or running ‘pan shops’ or ‘rearing cows’ as per the advice of the BJP chief minister of Tripura. But obviously they do not share the view of the Prime Minister Modi and the president of his party Amit Shah that such a ‘job’ in which one earns ‘Rs 200 a day’ with no guarantee of work the next day can be called ‘employment’. That is why they wanted a secure job with guaranteed income, even if it does not obviously meet their original aspirations.
Apart from the ground level experience, data from several prestigious institutions show the worsening unemployment situation.
The ‘State of Working India 2018’ report of Azim Premji University states that between 2013 and 2015 total employment actually shrank by 70 lakhs; more recent data from other such eminent agencies show that the absolute decline has continued past 2015. It is reported that 15000 – 20000 people lost their jobs in the telecom sector during the six months period ending 30th September 2018. The staffing firm TeamLease Services estimates that 65000 telecom workers will lose their jobs by 31stMarch 2019.
According to a report by IndiaSpend, fewest organised sector jobs in seven years were created in large companies and factories across eight important industries in the country in 2015. 60% of those with jobs do not find employment for the entire year which indicates widespread underemployment and temporary jobs.
The report pointed out that though India had seen high growth after 1991, less than half the population was fully employed.
Employment in the information technology sector has also dropped drastically in 2017-18 though these companies’ revenue has shown a decent growth. They are increasingly resorting to use of automation and higher technologies. According to some experts, the slowdown in hiring and the reduction in the number of employees, is taking place much faster than anticipated.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) unemployment rate in the country increased to 6.9%, the highest in two years. The number of persons employed in October 2018 was 39.7 crore. This was 40.7 crore in October 2017. 90 lakh jobs were lost in 11 months, up to September 2018 (Financial Express 26-9-2018). CMIE data also show that ‘joblessness is rising steadily from 3% of the potential workforce on 30th July 2017 to 8% on 23rd September 2018. This is a 167% increase in joblessness in just 14 months’. A new feature according to the report is the high rate of open unemployment, which is 16% for youth and the higher educated.
The trend of negative employment generation reported by these two non government agencies matches with the reports of the employment-unemployment surveys of Labour ministry that 2014 onwards net employment generation (including job losses owing to closure shut downs etc) has turned negative. There is an absolute decline in employment in the economy despite increase in GDP. The Labour Bureau reports of 2014 – 15 and 2015-16 reveal that hardly 3.7 lakh new jobs were created in the eight most labour intensive sectors including construction and IT, during this period. Of course, most of these jobs were temporary and contractual in nature. How did the BJP government react to these reports? It has stopped publishing of such reports by the Labour Bureau since 2016-17 on the pretext of revising the survey procedure.
But during the same period, at least 15 lakh jobs were lost due to shut downs, closures, lay off etc in industries and services. As majority of workers in industrial establishments are contract, casual/temporary etc, any decision to cut down production due to recession etc immediately results in retrenchment/ termination of services of these workers. Under the present BJP regime led by Modi, such cut down in production has become a regular feature.
The fact is that employment is on a downward trend. As this became clear, the BJP government started an aggressive campaign of false claims to cover its failure. It even involved various government run institutions like the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in this lie campaign. Led by the Prime Minister himself, ministers in the BJP government are competing with each other in spreading misinformation on employment generation to deceive people.
The Prime Minister claimed that 46 lakh jobs were created in 2017-18. The finance minister in his budget speech claimed that 70 lakh jobs have been created in the same period. Not to be outdone, the EPFO, obviously at the behest of the Labour Ministry, claimed that only in July 2018, 10 lakh new jobs have been generated. The latest is the claim that 85 lakh people have got jobs under the PMRPY.
What is the reality? The PMRPY is in fact a fraudulent project, which was announced by the Prime Minister in August 2016. Under this programme the employers’ contribution to Provident Fund for the new employees in the concerned establishment, will be paid by the government for a period of three years, as an incentive to employment generation. Through this programme, the BJP government under Modi has started a new kind of subsidy to the employers. It is shouldering employers’ statutory obligation on PF contribution, funding it from the national exchequer. The resultant increase in the number of EPF subscribers is shown as ‘employment generation’. The fact is that large numbers of workers who have been working are not covered by EPF despite being eligible for that owing to the failure of the enforcement machinery. Many employers deliberately flout the law. Under the PMRPY of the present BJP government, this failure of the enforcement machinery and deliberate violation of law is being covered up by huge transfer of people’s money to subsidise the employers. On the other this inclusion of already existing workers under EPF is dubiously shown as employment generation. This is how the BJP government under Modi is trying to serve its corporate masters and at the same time cheat the people. It might have disappointed the employment seeking youth. But it has satisfied the profit hungry corporates and big business. India’s ranking on ‘Ease of Doing Business Index’ has gone up from 130 to 100 and now further to 77. It wants to take it to under 50 by pursuing the same neoliberal policies, which have proved to be disastrous for the common people and the future of our youth.
Some of the ministers in the BJP government like Nitin Gadkari, though inadvertently, and a few bureaucrats were compelled to admit the truth. Reacting to the demands for reservation in jobs for the Marathas, Nitin Gadkari, the Surface Transport Minister in the Modi government, shot back asking ‘Where are the jobs?’ The Prime Minister’s claims in Parliament, citing EPFO payroll data, that 10 million jobs were created in the past year alone, were recently punctured by the chief statistician who said ‘EPFO enrolment data never talked about job creation’.
More than 50% of population in the country is below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It is estimated that India will have the largest number of working people in the world, around 87 crore, within four years. Our country can achieve great strides in development in all spheres by utilising this huge potential by employing their energies and creativity in the production process, services etc. But under the capitalist system, particularly in its latest and most predatory phase of neoliberalism, which the BJP government under Modi is aggressively pursuing, this cannot happen.
The perception, that economic growth by itself would create jobs, has been proved to be wrong by several reports at the national as well as international levels. The Azim Premji University ‘State of Working India 2018’ report also states that under neoliberalism growth was creating fewer jobs in the country. ‘In the 1970 and 1980s, when GDP growth was around 3-4%, employment growth was around 2% per year. In the 1990s and particularly in the 2000s, GDP growth has accelerated to 7% but employment has slowed to 1% per year or even less’.
Employment situation has worsened under the neoliberal regime with steep fall in permanent jobs and increase in precarious jobs like contract, casual, temporary, fixed term, part time, apprentices, trainees etc. The situation has further worsened after the systemic crisis which started in 2008 and is still continuing. Such crises are integral to the capitalist system and the employers seek to protect their profits by shifting the burden on to the workers. Increasing unemployment is one of the outcomes of this.
The joint trade union movement has been raising the demand for employment generation since long. It has been demanding that the concessions and exemptions being given to the big corporates should be linked to job creation. But the government totally ignored the demand. While every year tax exemptions of around Rs 5 lakh crore are given away to the big corporates, employment generation is becoming negative. Money due to the government is money due to the people. That is being waived off on the pretext that this will create jobs. But this has become a chimera. Net employment generation is turning negative. Whatever employment that is created, is of very poor quality, indecent, with no job security, income security or social security.
Employment generation is one of the 12 points demands raised by the country wide general strike on 8-9 January 2019 called by the joint trade union movement. The two days’ strike is part of the continuous struggle against the anti worker anti people and anti national neoliberal regime, which the BJP led government of Modi is pursuing with increased vigour and brutality.
Not only that. The BJP leading the government and its ideological mentor, the RSS are trying to divert the attention of the people and particularly the energies of the youth into unproductive and destructive channels. The RSS and its many outfits are utilising the frustration among the youth against lack of jobs, against lack of opportunities to develop their talents and creativity etc to create animosities on the basis of religion, caste, region etc, to polarise society for the electoral gains of the BJP. The issues of construction of Ram mandir at Ayodhya, the instigations against Supreme Court judgment allowing entry of women of all ages to the Sabarimala temple, the increasing attacks on minorities and dalits etc being engineered by the RSS and its various outfits are meant to achieve such polarisation of society. They are meant to divide - the working class, youth and society in general, disrupt people’s unity and weaken the fight against the neoliberal policies. The working class must be vigilant against any such attempts, protect its unity and defeat such divisive machinations.
Employment, along with many other issues on which the two days’ strike focuses, is an issue as much of all sections of the people as it is of the workers.
CITU appeals to the entire working class irrespective of their trade union or political affiliations to join the two days’ strike.
CITU also appeals to all toiling people and all sections of society to extend their solidarity and all forms of support to the strike.
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