Mumbai August 11, 2003: In a press statement, Mr. S. V. Raju, president of the Indian Liberal Group, has even while
welcoming the Supreme Court’s verdict that government servants cannot claim the right to strike, has disagreed with the statement made in the judgement that government employees have no “fundamental legal, more or equitable right” to go on strike even for a just cause.

The Indian Liberal Group accepts the workers’ right to collective bargaining whether they are in the public or the private sector. However a sound policy of dealing with government needs to be evolved and should be based on the following considerations:

(a) The drawing of a distinction between civil servants, those in essential services and those employed in industrial or other establishments managed by government with appropriate procedures applicable in each case;

(b) The establishment of appropriate machinery for negotiation and conciliation in order to facilitate collective bargaining including the establishment of suitable Joint Councils.

(c) The acceptance of the principle that, whenever civil servants and those employed in essential services are denied the right to strike, there should be an opportunity for the matter in dispute to be referred to arbitration, by a body, independent of the government and which is answerable only to parliament or the state assemblies and whose decision must be time bound. The decision of such a body should be final without further appeal to a court of law by both parties to the dispute; and

(d) The recognition of Unions and Associations of government employees being made conditional on their office bearers and executives being drawn from the ranks of the employees and not from those of outsiders. This will reduce considerably the scope for political parties misusing or creating labour unrest for their own political purposes.

In the long run workers must be encouraged to build their own unions and not, as at present, when most unions are managed by outsiders and many of them are playthings in the hands of political parties. The Indian Liberal Group is keen that trade unions should grow as independent
organisations of workers controlled and managed by themselves. This will reduce the scope for such strikes as both employers and employees know where the shoe pinches.