The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) expresses its warmest solidarity with the workers and people of India who held a national strike against anti-worker laws on July 9, in which 250 million workers and farmers participated. The strike highlights the kinds of attacks that the workers of the world, including Filipino workers, are facing and the need for them to fight back.

We lock arms in solidarity with, and raise our fists in salute to, the labor centers in India – led by the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), among others – who banded together in the Central Trade Unions (CTU) and led the strike that rocked all industrial activities and the entire country.

We join the workers and people of India in condemning the right-wing Narendra Modi government for treacherously passing the four labor laws in 2020, when the entire country, together with the world, was reeling with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We unite with them in demanding that the Modi government junk these laws that systematically attack workers’ labor rights and roll back the gains of the workers of India in their decades-long struggles.

The four labor laws should be junked because they, similar to existing laws in the Philippines:
>> Exempt 75% of factories from the coverage of labor laws, by increasing the threshold number of workers in a factory that will be covered by labor laws.
>> Create further hindrances to strikes by emulating a ban on strikes by civilian defence service employees in 2020, labelling strikes as “criminal acts” that have implications for strikers and their supporters, and incresing the requirements for holding a strike.
>> Increase factory working hours by giving state governments the power to create labor policies within their jurisdictions.
>> Legalize fixed-term employment, which will phase out permanent workers and run counter to retirement and retirement benefits, and will allow the replacement of regular workers by contract workers and apprentices which will receive stipends, not wages.
>> Press down wages by expanding the coverage of floor wages, which are lower than minimum wages, from agricultural workers into industrial workers.

We stand with the workers and people in India in forwarding demands that push back against the anti-worker labor laws:
>> An end to the privatization and contractualization of jobs
>> A Rs. 26,000 or USD 303 national minimum wage
>> Improvements in working conditions for all workers

The national strike belies the claims of the Modi government that India’s economy is developing, as the third or fourth biggest economy in the world. Indeed, Modi’s persecution of the Muslim minority in India has not brought about any real development for the majority of the country’s workers and people.