CITU has opposed the proposed changes in the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Central Rules, saying the move bypass the major issues raised by central trade unions. In a letter to the Director General of Labour Welfare on April 11, CITU general secretary Tapan Sen said the move is not at all welcomed as it seeks to confuse as well as permanently sideline the major issues pertaining to contract labourers that are being raised by the entire trade union movement. The issues are ensuring same wages and benefits as regular workers to the contract workers and regularising the contract workers employed in permanent perennial jobs. Provision for regularising the contract workers employed in permanent perennial jobs is mentioned in the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 but it is being flagrantly violated in almost all establishments including government departments and public sector undertakings. The Labour Ministry “preferred to remain a silent and indulgent onlooker”, he said. The issue of ensuring same wages and benefits as regular workers to the contract workers is already provided in the Central Rules, 1971 but it has never been implemented or even enforced by the authority concerned in any establishment of the country and this simply remained on paper. “Therefore, the present proposal of amending the Central Rules is destined to remain unimplemented/non-enforced since the enforcement machinery, which could remain indulgent onlooker to such violations, is not expected to go extra-mile for enforcing the proposed change in their anxiety to ensure ‘ease of doing business’,” Sen wrote. The proposed change to ensure minimum Rs 10,000 wage to contract workers in the Central Rules will not actually deliver any benefit to contract workers since the Rules are not justiceable, he said. “Moreover, it is surprising as to how the Ministry could conceive keeping certain gross inconsistency/anomaly inbuilt in the proposal. At present, in most of the states and establishments, the statutory minimum wage payable to the regular workers ranges on the average from Rs 5.500 to Rs 8,000. Will it be possible either by the state governments or the 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?” he asked. Sen said without addressing the issue of minimum wage in totality, such piecemeal approach will create more problems for implementation and the employers, who are always eager to deprive the workers, will grab the opportunity to make the entire exercise meaningless. 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. This not an arbitrary demand and the Seventh Pay Commission also made similar recommendation. This is as per the formula decided by the 15th Indian Labour Conference supplemented by the Supreme Court judgment in the Raptakkos Brett case and this formula has been unanimously endorsed by the 44th Session of Indian Labour Conference and reiterated again unanimously by the 46th ILC. This formula must be made a part of the Minimum Wages Act and this Act should be amended accordingly instead of pursuing the Wage Code Bill.” CITU insists that the changes as proposed should be incorporated in the body of the main Act -- the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 -- through appropriate amendment and not in the Central Rules alone, if the intention is to get the benefits delivered to the contract workers and not just a pious declaration for public consumption only.