Dear Comrade,
We publish hereunder a brief
note on some of the demands included in the ten point charter of
demands, which are of utmost concern to Central Government employees in
pursuance of which we have decided to embark upon the one day strike
action on 7thSeptember, 2010 along with the other sections of
the working class. The affiliates and State Committees may kindly take
necessary steps to circulate the same amongst the members. The State
committees are especially requested to kindly translate the same in the
vernacular if possible so as to ensure that the message contained in the
Note reaches the employees.
With greetings,
Yours fraternally,
K.K.N. Kutty
Secretary General
1.On price rise and the PDS.
The Economic crisis in
nineties caused primarily by the indiscriminate borrowings indulged in
by the Government of India especially from the world bodies like IMF
and the adherence to their conditionalities) created a conducive climate
for the proponents and champions of market economy to advocate the
globalization path of economic development. The State began to withdraw
itself from various sectors and the least governance was considered as
the virtue and synonym for good governancne. In other words, the
Government withdrew itself from the concept of welfare governance and
opted for faster economic development through privatization,
liberalization and globalization. The agony and misery of common
multitude, the consequence of adoption of market economy was considered
by the rulers as the price to be paid in the process. The various
subsidies provided to ensure that the essential commodities needed for
human existence is made available to the common people was treated as a
profligacy and concerted efforts were made to cut them drastically in
budget after budget presented to the Parliament. The media both print
and electronic which had gone into the hands of large corporate houses
by then propagated the liberalization and globalization policies to the
hilt and inside the Parliament various legislations were moved and
enacted by the ruling class supported by the dominant opposition
parties, with the sole exception of the Left parties.
The Working class
organizations except those affiliated to INTUC and BMS realizing the
dangerous impact on the lives of the common people decided to oppose the
neo-liberal economic policies by strike and other demonstrative
actions. Between the period 1991 and 2008, the sponsoring committee of
Central Trade Unions along with the different Federations of employees
organized strike actions on 12 occasions which indeed made deleterious
impact over the pace with which the Indian ruling class wanted to usher
in these policies. Not only the common people, but also the
intellectual and the middle class had to admit albeit reluctantly that
but for the consistent opposition of the left parties and the working
class organizations, the global financial crisis that engulfed the
American and European Continents and many other parts of the world would
have destroyed the Indian economy. To tide over the ripple it created
in the Indian Economy, the Government had to make outflow of crores of
rupees in the name of bail-out packages to Indian Industry. Once the
crisis is blown over, the Government has gone back to its good old days
of implementing these discredited policies with a vengeance.
The unbridled accumulation of
wealth in a few hands, the cardinal consequence of the capitalist
economic development bring about a pyramidal society giving no room for
the poor people at the base even to eke out an existence. This aspect
became more and more pronounced over the years and reached a stage that
it became impossible for anybody who is supposed to be representing the
workers to continue to ignore this phenomenon. Those organizations
which had taken a contradictory stand against the sponsoring committee
had to come together to voice their concern against the marginalization
of the working people. Both BMS and INTUC had to join in the concerted
efforts of the workers to oppose, if not the policies, at least the
manifestation of it, especially the escalation of prices of essential
commodities. The inflationary impact in the economy created by the
pursuance of the neo-liberal economic policies mostly engineered was
conceived to effect a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The
inflationary impact reached an intolerable stage in as much as its
incremental rate from quarter to quarter was in two digits .Never in our
post independent era had it assumed the dimension of today with the
result that all opposition political parties in the country had to rally
round inside and outside the Parliament to denounce the Government of
inaction and the 5th August Nationwide bandh became total and
resonant.
In the immediate years after
independence, in order to ensure food security to the people of India,
the Indian ruling class under pressure created the universal public
distribution system especially for food articles. It became an
effective instrument in the years to contain the artificial rise of
market prices of essential commodities especially in the face of
hoarding and black market operations of unscrupulous traders. The
sweep and range of commodities made available through these outlets,
known as ration shops in the common parlance even though beset with
innumerable problems connected with leakages and corruption, was the
most effective welfare measure of the Government of India, which in no
small degree arrested and stopped the starvation death in rural
India. The advent of neo liberal economic policies ensured that this
singular welfare measure of universal public distribution system was
discarded.
Both inside and outside
Parliament our Present day rulers advocated that the higher prices are
inevitable given the shortfall in domestic production and prevailing
higher prices of rice, wheat, pulses and edible oil globally. Far from
truth the statement was, as the production of food-grain in 2006-07 in
our country was 9.3 cr. tonnes, 9.6 crores in 2007-08 and 9.9 crores in
2008-09 despite the fact that our investment in agricultural sector in
the last ten years was less than 2% of the GDP and constantly year after
year the Government had been withdrawing subsidy to the farm sector.
Primarily to ensure that the
universal PDS is in operation, and the peasants do get remunerative
price for their produce, the Government had created a buffer stock of
food-grains. The statutory norm fixed was to have 200 lakh tonnes of
wheat and rice as buffer stock. Presently the FCI godowns carry 475
lakhs of food-grains. Of it 3 million tones are reported to be rotting
for want of space in the warehouses and rats the beneficiaries. This
made the honourable Supreme Court to ask the Government as to why that
which cannot be stored properly be distributed to the poor.
While dismantling the PDS
destroyed the food security enjoyed by the poor, the permission granted
to speculators to indulge in forward trading in food articles with an
intent to artificially boost the statistical growth of economy resulted
in the soaring of prices in the market. The fervent appeals made by the
informed public, intelligentsia in the society and the Parliamentarians
belonging to the left parties to ban forward trading fell in the deaf
ears for that would have entailed in the slowing down the reforms, which
course the UPA II Government had vowed to intensify. Despite the
reportedly enviable growth rate of 8 to 9% over the past few years and
the consequent rise in the per capita income of our country, vast
majority of our countrymen have become poorer while the number of dollar
billionaires were doubled. According to Shri Arjun Sengupta report, 77%
of Indian population have a daily income of less than Rs. 20. And the
Tax concessions, deduction and exemptions given away in the last budget
to those who can afford to pay the levies was of the order of Rs. 5.18
lakh crores.
It is on the top of all
these, the GOI recently hiked the petrol prices perhaps the nth time the
UPA is in power on the specious plea of helping the Public Sector
Petroleum marketing companies out of the under recoveries. In the
context of IOL making a profit of 10998 Crores in 2009-10 and the
respective figure for HPCL and BPL being Rs. 544 Cr and 874 crores and
the Govt. of India making a neat additional tax of Rs.86,000 crores (Rs.
110000 Crores minus State share of Rs. 24,000 crores), this fiscal, only
an insensitive Government alone can resort to these measures.
This being the general
scenario which must be of concern to us rather of grave concern, it
would be pertinent to note the erosion in our real wages brought about
by the unprecedented escalation of retail prices of commodities of daily
consumption. The 6th CPC determined the minimum wage on the
basis of the retail prices of various commodities as existed on
1.01.2006. (Please see page 53 of the 6th CPC report). We
are unlike those in the unorganized sectors in the company of those
segment of the working class, who get their wages cost indexed,
howsoever, defective, trivial and insufficient it is. Therefore, we get
35% addition to our wages in the form of DA ( raised to 45% by the
recent hike). From the table given hereunder we can see that the
average rise in the prices of those commodities which are taken for the
computation of minimum wage has been of the order of 175%.
Sl.No
|
Name of articles
|
Price as 1.1.2006
|
As on date
|
%increase
|
1
|
Rice
|
18
|
38
|
120
|
2
|
Dhall 4 varieties; average
|
40
|
87
|
120
|
3
|
Raw vegetables
|
10
|
40
|
400
|
4
|
Green veg.
|
10
|
56
|
560
|
5
|
Other veg
|
10
|
40
|
400
|
6
|
Fruits
|
30
|
100
|
330
|
7
|
milk
|
24
|
32
|
40
|
8
|
Sugar,jiggery. average
|
24
|
43
|
95
|
9
|
Edible oil.3 varieties.average
|
50
|
95
|
95
|
10
|
Fish
|
120
|
300
|
150
|
11
|
meat
|
120
|
240
|
100
|
12
|
egg
|
2
|
3
|
50
|
13
|
Detergents/soap
|
200
|
350
|
75
|
14
|
Cloth
|
80
|
120
|
50
|
Average increase :
|
174
|
- Fill up all vacant posts and lift the ban on recruitment. Stop outsourcing contractoisation of Governmental functions.
The VI-CPC had recommended the abolition
of Gr. D. posts numbering about 9.4 lakhs in the Government of India..
The CPC raised all the Gr. D employees existing in the Govt. sector to
the status of a skilled worker and placed them in Gr. C pay scale. The
suggested pay scale of the upgraded personnel is a pre-revised pay of Rs
2750-70-3800-75-4400. In fact the said pay scale was the fourth grade
of pay suggested by the V-CPC for the unskilled workers. In para 3.7.7
of the Pay commission recommendations the commission has observed that:
"Increasingly' basic work relating to
cleaning, sweeping, maintenance etc. is being outsourced. This is a
welcome trend that needs to be encouraged by bringing about systematic
changing in the existing scheme so that the employees in Govt. are only
utilized for requiring a certain levels of skills".
It is a fact that majority of the
functions presently carried out by the Gr.D. employees across the Board
is unskilled. What had actually been done by the Commission is to
abolish the unskilled functions in the Governmental sector and pave way
for more and more contractorisation of these jobs while the existing
employees (whose working strength has become less than 50% of the
sanctioned strength) might be classified as Gr.C. and assigned to do
functions which are of skilled nature with lesser emoluments than what
it could have been even as per the V-CPC recommendations. It is
therefore, a disastrous recommendation. In the days to come the
unskilled nature of jobs would be either outsourced or would be
contractorised. This recommendation therefore, is not for the benefit
of the existing employees who are recruited as unskilled workers. Now
the recruitment will hereafter become unavailable in the Governmental
sector for those who are in the lower strata of the society who could
not afford or who are not provided even the primary education even
though the universal primary education is stated to be the objective and
goal of a welfare Government as per our constitution.. In fact they are
being punished for the social inability or abdication of the
responsibility on the part of the Government to provide them with a
decent standard of living or the nascent requirement of primary
education. The recommendation is therefore, a by-product of the
neo-liberal economic policies pursued by the Govt. since 1991 which we
have been fighting against all these years along with other segment of
the working class.
As has been feared, the
Government has now decided to ensure that all unskilled jobs are
contractorised. The guidelines issued by the Department of Personnel
for the Mutlti-tasking staff makes it mandatory that the future
recruitees to the government service has a minimum educational
qualification of matriculation. The recruitment will be done through
the Staff Selection Commission. These personnel may not be deployed for
the unskilled jobs like that of sweeper, farash, mali, watchmen etc.
These functions would naturally be contractorised. The Department of
Personnel has already advised all concerned to go in for
contractorisation of these functions. The workers so recruited by the
contractors are not to have any job security as they will be liable for
the hire and fire system.
Outsourcing
In the background of the
continuing ban on recruitment, many of the Government organizations has
resorted to outsourcing of their functions which are of permanent and
perennial nature to agencies on fixed rates. The very fact that the
Government has made available funds for the Departmental heads to resort
to outsourcing establishes the policy being pursued by the
Government. The functions hitherto being carried out by the Group C
employees and the Group B Non gazaetted are liable to be
outsourced. Once the system is established, there will be no likelihood
of any fresh creation of posts in these cadres. The large scale
computerization has helped the outsourcing as a fesible
proposition.
3. Regularise
the Daily rated workers, GDS, remove ceiling on compassionate
appointments end discrimination in the grant of bonus to GDS employees.
In the background of the continuing ban
on recruitment, quite a number of workers had been recruited in
Government service on daily rated basis. Many of them have completed
more than a decade in Government service. They had been on the pay roll
of the Government to carry out the functions of a permanent and
perennial nature of jobs. The resort to recruitment of daily waged
workers to carry out the functions which are clearly permanent and
perennial nature is in clear violation of the extant instruction in the
matter. Having elicited their service for the past several years, they
should be regularized as permanent employees with all concomitant
benefits. Retrenching them to be replaced with fresh daily rated
workers is impermissible.
Similar is the case of GDS employees in
the Postal Department. The system a colonial concept ought to have been
discarded long time back. The functions entrusted to the GDS in the
Postal Department are of permanent nature. Some of them are required to
do more than 8 hours work a day. Many of the post offices, especially
in rural areas are manned by the GDS and the postmen are required to
function continuously for more than 8 hours a day but still paid as a
part time employee. There should be a system by which these employees
who are recruited as GDS are absorbed as regular employees after a pre
determined number of years of service. Another issue pertaining to the
GDS is the unjust denial of the benefit of the raised quantum ceiling on
bonus calculation. While the Bonus Act was amended by the Government,
raising the emoluments ceiling for the purpose of calculation of bonus
from Rs. 2500 to 3500, it was extended to all civil servants except the
GDS. Most of the GDS has a monthly emoluments beyond the limit of Rs.
3500. There is no justification for denying this benefit to them.
Remove the arbitrary 5% ceiling and 3
years condition on compassionate appointment and withdraw court cases
and absorb all waitlisted RRR .
On the pretext of the directive of the
Supreme Court, Govt. introduced the concept of a 5% ceiling on the
compassionate appointment. The fact was that there had been no such
directive from the Honourable Supreme Court. There had been no rhyme or
reason for this stipulation. Despite the repeated discussion on the
subject at the National Council and its Standing Committee and the
solemn assurance given by the Cabinet Secretary in the wake of the last
strike action, nothing has been done in this regard to resolve the
issue. It is pertinent to mention in this connection that the
compassionate appointments in the Railways continue to be operated
without any such ceiling. Moreover in the Department of Posts hundreds
of compassionate appointment candidates selected by Selection Committee
are being denied jobs and attempt to oust them is on. Through legal stay
orders these candidates known as RRR Candidates are fighting the battle.
The Government should withdraw the SLP filed against them and absorb
them all as regular employees and withdraw the orders imposing and
arbitrary ceiling of 5% and non-consideration of the case of candidates
whose applications are pending for more than 3 years.
4. Grant statutory defined
pension scheme to the employees recruited after 1.1.2004 and withdraw
the PFRDA Bill from Parliament.
The present defined benefit scheme of
pension was introduced replacing the then existing contributory system.
As part of the neo liberal economic policies, the Government decided to
reconvert the same into contributory and make the fund available for the
stock market operations. It is the vagaries of the stock market which
will determine the pension returns from this fund. Before the
introduction of the PFRDA bill, the Government had set up a committee
under the chairmanship of Shri Bhattacharya, Chief Secretary of the
State of Karnataka. The bill has been drafted and presented to the
Parliament disregarding even the recommendation of the said committee to
the effect that the Govt. should consider introducing a hybrid system by
which the employees will have a defined benefit, if they choose to be
satisfied with the said return and can opt for a higher return through
stock exchange investments. The Bill could not be passed in the
Parliament as the Left Parties took the principled position that they
would not support a proposal detrimental to the interest of the
employees. Despite the non passage of the bill and the consequent
absence of a valid law to support the Pension Regulatory authority, the
Govt. has converted the existing pension scheme into a contributory one
and invested a percentage of the fund so generated from the employees
contribution in the Stock market, whose index has crashed to one third
of the value at the time of investment.
Pension is earned by an employee by
rendering service and therefore there is no requirement of any payment
by the employee for earning pension. This statutory right of the
employee is enforceable through courts. The Supreme Court has declared
pension as one of the fundamental rights. The government should
therefore retrace from its avowed position, which is detrimental to the
interest of the employees and ensure that the employees recruited after
1.1.2004 is covered by the existing statutory defined benefit scheme by
withdrawing the PFRDA bill from the Parliament.
5.Right to Strike;
Continuing with the colonial
concept of denying the Civil servants the privileges enjoyed by the
other sections of the society is a matter of great distress. Article
309 of the Constitution makes it incumbent upon the Government of India
and the Provincial Government to make enactments to regulate the service
conditions of the civil servants. The Indian Parliament had no time to
make such enactment. In fact the Indian ruling class wanted no such
enactments. The transitory provisions empowering the President of India
to make rules till such time the enactment is made has been employed to
regulate the service conditions of the Government employees.
Once recruited as an
employee, the ILO's conventions provide all trade union rights. India is
a signatory to those conventions. Despite all these legal and moral
obligations on the part of the Government, the Government employees
continue to be denied the right to collective bargaining. No
negotiation is worth the meaning, if the employees have no right to
withdraw their labour in case of a non satisfactory agreement on their
service conditions. It is this legal lacuna which was employed by the
Supreme Court to justify the arbitrary dismissal of lakhs of employees
by the Tamilnadu State Government when they resorted to strike
action. In the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court, it was observed
that the Government employees do not have any legal, fundamental or
moral right to resort to strike action. It is all the more an injustice
especially when the Government considers that strike is a right of the
workers in the Public Sector undertaking and that of the private
enterprises in the country. It is paramount that the Government
employees do have the right to strike in order to force upon an
agreement for better wages and service conditions.
Source - ccgew
Source - ccgew
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