Kolkata: "There has been no separate decision taken with regard to [the IT sector in] West Bengal," the leadership of the State unit of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) said here on Thursday. It welcomed the statement of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that all labour laws of the country should be applicable to the information technology sector.

"That workers in the sector have the right to organise and bargain [as asserted by the Polit Bureau] is also a correct decision," secretary of the State CITU unit, Kali Ghosh, told The Hindu . His remarks come in the wake of a special mention of West Bengal during the Polit Bureau's discussions on the right to form unions in the IT sector on Wednesday.

In a note sent to the Labour Ministry at a time when it was formulating reforms in labour laws, CITU president and Polit Bureau member M.K. Pandhe said that overall the working conditions in the sector were deplorable.

Echoing his views, All India Trade Union Congress general secretary Gurudas Dasgupta said, "There is largely a common consensus among trade unions of large-scale violation of labour laws in the information technology sector. There is anarchy going on there."

The CPI (M) Polit Bureau reiterated at its meeting the need to identify services within the IT sector which could function even in the event of a strike being called.

Document to be prepared

A document would be prepared and placed before the party's central committee at its three-day session beginning on December 14. It would identify the core sectors with essential services for the purpose of greater clarity in the manner in which the business functions.

But Mr. Dasgupta, a senior Communist Party of India MP, wondered about " the reasons for this outcry" in a sector "that does not have a continuous process units like the blast furnaces in steel plants which are kept out of the purview of a strike and not shut down on such occasions."

"Why is such amount of significance being given to the information technology sector" when it comes to the trade union movement?

"A responsible trade union has its duties to the nation and the workers and moves towards integrating the two [responsibilities]," he said.

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