CITU, CPM write to Stalin against amendment to Factories Act

CHENNAI: CITU general secretary Tapan Sen and CPM state secretary K Balakrishnan have written to Chief Minister MK Stalin to drop the Factories (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Bill, 2023 which has been tabled in the Assembly on April 12.

The bill sought to insert a provision namely- "65A-Power to exempt in special cases" in the Factories Act, 1948, so as to empower the Tamil Nadu Government to exempt any factory or group of factories from certain provisions of the Factories Act, 1948 which have basically been dealing with the working hours of workers.

The Amendment Bill proposes, rather empower the state government to exempt any factory or group or class or description of factories from any or all of the provisions of Sections 51, 52, 54, 55, 56 or 59 of the Factories Act, 1948 or the rules made thereunder, he said. "In essence, the provisions of the concerned Bill are aimed at open-endedly to empower the employers to evade all their statutory obligations in respect of working hours in the workplaces through such mass-scale exemption mechanism in respect of almost all provisions of the Factories Act, both directly and indirectly related to regulations of working hours. It will be disastrous for the workers in the state besides provoking absolute anarchy in industrial relations management," Sen explained in the letter.

In his letter to Stalin, Balakrishnan said that in the explanation given to the bill, it was mentioned that the amendment is based on the applications received from industries and industry associations. "I would like to bring to your notice that the amendment of the welfare laws of the workers by acceding to the demands of the industrialists will have dire consequences to deprive them of their rights," he said.

"We would like to point out that Tamil Nadu is the only non-BJP state that has proposed such an amendment among the investment-intensive states in India. It is absolutely unfair for a state like Tamil Nadu to pass this law which was passed completely dictatorially without any debate or vote when the opposition parliamentarians were fighting outside the parliament along with the people against the Union Government's anti-farmers bill," he noted.