Just ahead of reopening of industries in Karnataka after being shut for over a month, the State government has set up a 16-member task force to deal with issues related to wage and retrenchment that are likely to come up in both organised and unorganised sectors.
Nine unions
The task force, headed by the Additional Commissioner (Industrial Relations), has representatives from nine trade unions in the State and representatives from industry bodies such as CII, CREDAI, FKCCI, and KASSIA. The task force will compulsorily meet once in two days to take appropriate decisions on the grievances to be filed by workers. This is in addition to the Labour Wage and Retrenchment COVID Helpline that has been receiving grievances related to salary and retrenchment over the past fortnight.
The task force comes in the light of demand by trade unions to have an institutional mechanism to prevent wage cuts and retrenchment, and a U-turn made by the State government, apparently under pressure from industry bodies, on a Labour Department’s directive to industries not to cut wages or retrench workers. Incidentally, the Union government had on March 28 issued a directive to States to protect wages for the lockdown period and jobs of workers in the industries.
No statutory powers
Welcoming the setting up of the task force, AITUC general secretary D.A. Vijaybhaskar told The Hindu that though the task force does not have any statutory powers, it is still a good move considering that the industry expects many factories to fold up. “It can see whether the permission to close is on a genuine ground. Otherwise, when businesses close in big numbers, tracing the owner becomes difficult and workers may be left in the lurch. It can function as a joint body to mitigate the suffering of the workforce,” he added.
