In a development that must be discomfiting for the government, Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) chief Sanjeeva Reddy on Friday announced the organisation’s plans to join the anti-UPA general strike on September 7. The INTUC, a trade union wing of Congress, also advertised the emotional distance between it and the government by declaring the union’s plans in the company of CITU’s M K Pandhe and CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta.
Mr Reddy took on the Manmohan Singh government for its “failure” to take steps to contain price rise, particularly food inflation. “We have in mind a massive workers’ march to Parliament in February next year,” he said at an INTUC press conference in New Delhi.
Just hours earlier, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had tried to reach out to the INTUC leader, who is also a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC). However, Mr Reddy went ahead with his plans of joining other central trade union leaders to announce the countrywide agitation.
To a question as to how the Congress-affiliated INTUC was joining the Left trade unions, Mr Reddy said: “If Congress could form a government with the Left’s support, then what is the harm in joining hands with them for an agitation.” Mr Reddy said the trade unions have been forced to chalk out a joint strategy because of the worsening scenario for the working class. “The government’s failure to control inflation and its indifference to the trade unions are matters of grave concern,” he said.
INTUC, which chose to ignore the party leadership’s plea against participating in anti-government protest actions, had earlier presided over meetings of central trade unions to decide on the campaigns. For Congress, it’s bound to be embarrassing. Mr Reddy is the convenor of the joint platform of trade unions, which came into existence after a gap of nearly three decades. Though RSS-backed BMS was also part of the platform, it decided against joining the general strike on September 7.
No comments:
Post a Comment