CPI Exhorts Telangana Workers To Join Sep 2 Strike

The Telangana arm of the CPI today offered support to the nation-wide strike being organized by the Central and State trade unions on September 2, demanding labour policy reforms across the nation, and also exhorted Telangana's government and public employees and labourers to join in.

In a press release on Wednesday, CPI General Secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy said, "The labour union's demands which include control of prices of goods, withdrawal of 'anti-worker' labour reforms, stopping the disinvestment of the public sector, providing social security to workers of the unorganized sector, stopping mergers and closure of banks, increasing minimum wages to Rs. 18,000, providing pension to all retirees and removing FDI in the railway, defence and insurance sectors, are fully justified. The government discussed the issue only with the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a pro-government trade union, ignoring all other major unions. Several trade unions had organized a nation-wide strike on September 2 last year in which 150 million workers participated. How can the government ignore that?" he asked.

"The Union Minister for Labour tried to mislead the nation by stating that seven out of the eight demands of the workers were met, which is false. There wouldn't be a nation-wide strike if that were the case. This is unfortunate," he added.

Workers and employees would gather in large numbers to fight back against the anti-labour policies of the Union government, he claimed.