CITU raps Govt’s draft contract labour rules

Central trade union CITU on Monday criticised the draft contract labour rules, which propose a minimum wage of Rs 10,000 for contract workers, among others, and has demanded a minimum wage of Rs 18,000 for all.

The draft rules that seek to modify some provisions of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Central Rules, 1971, were notified on March 30 by the Labour Ministry for seeking comments of stakeholders within a months’ time to formalise it.

“At this juncture, the move by the Ministry is not at all a welcome one since it seeks to confuse as well as permanently sideline the major issue, pertaining to contract labour, being jointly raised by the entire trade union movement,” CITU said in a statement.

It said that the proposed change on minimum Rs 10,000 wage for a contract worker in the rules will not actually deliver any benefit to such workers since these are not justifiable. Moreover, it is surprising as to how the Ministry could conceive keeping certain gross inconsistency/anomaly in the proposal. At present, in most of the states and establishments, statutory minimum wage payable also to regular workers ranges from Rs 5,500 to Rs 8,000.

“Will it be possible either by the state governments or central government to create a situation where contract workers are getting minimum Rs 10,000 as per the proposed change and the regular workers in the same establishment are getting less than that? Such inconsistency or anomaly if allowed to remain will become a plea for the employers not to implement the same. Is that the intention for the whole exercise?” CITU questioned.

CITU demanded that the minimum wage should be fixed at not less than Rs 18,000 at the current price level along with the provision for indexation.