Protest Against Labor Code on July 17
A meeting of the CITU District Committee of Sirmaur, presided over by Veena Sharma, was held in Nahan. CITU State President Vijendra Mehra attended the meeting. It was decided that in opposition to the anti-worker, anti-farmer, anti-employee, and anti-public policies of the Modi government, CITU State Committee will hold large-scale demonstrations at district and block headquarters on July 17.
CITU District General Secretary Ashish Kumar and CITU Acting President Neelam Sharma stated that demands include declaring a minimum wage of ₹26,000 for workers, repealing the anti-worker four labor codes, National Monetization Pipeline, Agniveer, Ayuddhveer, Koylaveer, and other fixed-term employment schemes. Additionally, they demand reducing punishment conditions for violations of EPF, EPS, and EDLI facilities, providing universal comprehensive social security for unorganized workers, ensuring job security for contract workers, giving them equal pay as regular employees, reinstating OPS for employees of central and state government boards and corporations, implementing a minimum pension of ₹9,000, regularizing Anganwadi, ASHA, and Mid-Day Meal workers, providing them minimum wages and social security, restoring economic benefits and registration facilities for MGNREGA and construction workers from the Labor Welfare Board, declaring scheduled employment for STP workers, formulating a policy for outsourced and hospital workers, increasing industrial workers’ wages by 40%, opposing the eviction of street vendors, increasing working hours from 8 to 12 hours, exempting IT and ITES industries from labor laws, ensuring minimum support prices for farmers, implementing the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission, expanding urban areas and providing 200 days of work at ₹600 per day under MGNREGA, restoring registration and economic benefits for MGNREGA and construction workers from the Labor Welfare Board, formulating a policy for outsourced workers, reinstating COVID workers who were dismissed, curbing high inflation, stopping privatization of public enterprises, and freeing farmers from debt.
They emphasized that due to the neoliberal and capitalist-friendly policies of the Modi government, unemployment, poverty, inequality, and livelihood crises are increasing. Rising unemployment and inflation have exacerbated poverty and hunger. The weakening of the public distribution system has caused soaring prices, breaking the back of the public. There have been significant hikes in the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas, and food items. They demand a minimum wage of ₹26,000 per month and pension for all workers, the repeal of the anti-worker four labor codes and electricity amendment bill, halting the contract, part-time, multi-purpose, multi-task, temporary, casual, fixed-term, contract labor, and outsourcing systems by regularizing all these workers, providing 200 days of work at ₹600 per day under MGNREGA with urban expansion, and taking the demands of MGNREGA, construction, and BRO workers to the public, urging them to vote against the BJP and Modi due to their anti-worker, anti-employee, anti-farmer, and anti-public policies.
They also discussed exposing the Modi government’s anti-worker policies on issues like privatization and disinvestment of public enterprises, the National Monetization Pipeline, the Agnipath scheme, inflation, ration system in depots, regularization of Anganwadi, Mid-Day Meal, ASHA workers, electricity board, municipal corporations, and other board and corporation employees, reinstating OPS, privatization and regularization of BRO, the Street Vendors Act, and anti-worker and anti-owner changes in the Motor Vehicle Act.
Union officials including Indu Tomar, Maya, Sandeep, Sudesh Kumar, Vineet, Bala Ram, Gulabi, Sheela, Chander Kala, Shama, Anita, Lata, Ajay, Sunita, Shyama Sharma, and Dwarika were present at the meeting. Neelam Sharma was unanimously elected as the acting district president of CITU.
