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Of labour welfare schemes and voluntary retirement

In a major step to ensure social security for over 300 million agricultural workers, a new group insurance scheme was launched by the labour ministry, which also took a number of measures for the welfare of construction workers, bonded, child and women labourers during the year.

Aimed at providing comprehensive benefits of life insurance, pension and disability benefits to the farm labourers, the ambitious Krishi Shramik Samajik Suraksha Yojana 2001 was launched by the ministry and the Life Insurance Corporation of India on July 1.

Initially launched in 50 blocks in as many districts across the country, the scheme covering 20,000 landless labourers in each block would be extended to other areas subsequently.

To ensure the success of the scheme, the Centre has made a provision of Rs 1.50 billion, from a current corpus of Rs 5 billion, for the next three years.

In the area of social security, the ministry enacted a number of legislations for workers in various fields. While benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1923, were jerked up in different categories, more facilities were provided under the Employees Provident Fund Act, 1952 to cover employees of all private sector banks.

While regional offices of the EPF organisation were set up in the new states of Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh as also in Goa, for the first time arrangements were made for disbursement of pension through 26,000 post offices across the country under the employees pension scheme.

Besides drawing up ambitious plans of modernising and upgrading medical services under the Employees State Insurance Scheme, the ministry took a number of important initiatives to provide health care and cash benefits in case of sickness, maternity and employment-related injuries.

Benefiting 600,000 workers, ESI has exempted insured persons earning upto Rs 40 a day from payment of employees' contribution while dependent and disability benefits under ESI scheme have been increased ranging from 14 per cent to 23.59 per cent.

ESI has also decided to upgrade one hospital into a model hospital in each state with the state-of-the-art facilities.

The ministry also formulated various schemes for the welfare of beedi, non-coal mines and cine workers. While the salary ceiling limit of mine workers for eligibility for welfare benefits has been increased to Rs.10,000 per month, review of Group Insurance Scheme for beedi workers has been undertaken to make it more effective.

The second National Labour Commission, set up to review the plight of the unorganised sector and suggest an umbrella legislation for them, has been given extension till February 2002 and was currently studying the reports submitted by various study groups on different issues.

To deal with the problem of child labour, the ministry set up National Child Labour Projects in different areas to rehabilitate them. So far, 100 child labour projects have been sanctioned covering 213,000 children.

'Year of voluntary retirement'

The year 2001 will be remembered by the workforce in the country as the 'Year of voluntary retirement'.

During 2000-2001 most of the companies offered the voluntary retirement scheme and around 50 per cent employees opted for it in the absence of an alternative, according to Dada Samant, brother of late trade union leader Datta Samant.

VRS poses a major problem in a country like India, which has more than one billion people, says Samant, who heads the Mumbai-based trade union 'Kamgar Agadhi'.

The year saw substantial change in employer-employee relationship as organisations shed their flab for achieving optimum productivity threatening the survival of employees in the absence of an efficient social security system.

''The modern work-spot has become a cockpit of coercive collective bargaining as workers, with their weak bargaining power, are often subject to discriminating policies with stoppage of shifts and intermittent industrial disputes that suffocates both production and productivity,'' says trade union leader Vijay Kamble.

In an increasingly competitive and globalised business environment, success of an organisation depends upon the commitment and involvement of employees, but the future of employees is gloomy following the introduction of VRS and compulsory retirement scheme.

According to Kamble, more than 50 per cent of small-scale industries across the country have closed down their shutters in the face of strong global competition following economic reforms and globalisation.

If the trend continues for the next few years, Kamble warns, the work-force 'liability' will increase and unemployment will take a heavy toll on our youth who may be forced to take recourse to extreme options like terrorism.

Industrialist Arvind Doshi agrees. ''The root cause of terrorism in the north-east is unemployment among the youth. We need a policy to generate greater employment opportunities in the region,'' he says.

According to him, reducing the number of employees is only a temporary solution. The need of the hour is increasing employment opportunities for a robust growth of the country's economy. ''If we are not able to generate employment, employers also will not survive.''

In the organised sector, employment opportunity had dwindled by about ten per cent. The SSIs are the hardest hit

However, even trade union leaders agree that workers need to change their attitude to keep pace with the fast-changing situation. Several trade unions conducted workshops during the year for their members to educate them about the emerging challenges.

Though India is blessed with a skilled work force and has abundant raw materials to be a world leader, it has a poor work culture, trade union leaders said.

The near-absence of knowledge of labour laws and non-implementation of labour policies have added to the problem.

''Ninety-eight per cent of the sum allocated for the national renewal fund was utilised to pay the severance package to public sector employees who opted for VRS during the year,'' said Doshi.

According to Samant, the government should seriously rethink before giving in to the diktats of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Even reputed mills like Swadeshi Mills owned by the Tatas closed down their shutters forcing several workers to commit suicide, he adds.

The one-point programme of employers is to finish unskilled workers. ''That is the reason they are pressurising the government to change labour laws,'' Samant said.

Instead of changing the laws the emphasis should be on upgrading technology, training workers and improving quality of goods on par with global standards. ''This is the only remedy for the survival of the industry,'' he adds.

The employers blame the poor labour-management relationship in the country for the ills of the industry. ''We have to improve the quality of our produce and service to be able to successfully compete in the global market,'' says Philips India Ltd chief executive officer K Ramchandran. The labour and management rapport in India is a poor 4.8 per cent while in Singapore it is as high as 20 per cent.

The country needs to improve its image and should adopt a fundamentally different approach to become globally competitive and make laws competitive as well as take workers into confidence, said Ramchandran.

(PTI and UNI)

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