Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Prime Minister has called for a consensus on dealing with the situation arising out of the Supreme Court judgment banning the right to strike. He was speaking at the 39th session of three-day Indian Labour Conference in Delhi.

The Conference began today in the backdrop of Supreme Court's August 6, 2003 judgment in T.K. Rangarajan vs Government of Tamil Nadu & Others on workers' right to strike. The apex court has held that workers do not have the right to strike.

The Supreme Court judgment had neither pleased the trade unions nor was he happy with the directive and the need now was to get together to deal with the situation. His remarks came after the trade union leaders, present at the conference, insisted on knowing the Government’s stand on the judgment and demanded that the Centre bring in legislation to protect the rights of the workers.

At another seminar organised by Institute of Human Development in Delhi on Workers and Right to Strike, Professor Madhu Dandavate, former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission said, right to strike is a constitutional right subject to reasonable restrictions. The judgement must be sent to a larger constitution bench for review to safeguard the rights of the working class, said S. Jaipal Reddy, spokesman of the All India Congress Party said. Prof. Deepak Nayyar, Vice-chancellor, Delhi University who chairing the seminar said, right to strike is a basic human right, which entails fundamental cultural, social and economic rights. An appropriate legislative measure can ensure that the civil society benefits it.

One of the panellists Prof. Jagdish Chettiar justified the apex court order banning right to strike saying, the judgement has to be seen in the modern context. He said, workers can get better treatment from the employers by keeping them in good humour than what they get through the bargaining of trade unions. He added, the strike in any case is a weapon only for the 8 percent of the work force, which is organised and 92 percent of the workers are in the organised sector.

Sitaram Yechury of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Supreme Court is supreme but judges are infallible. Since the onset of neo-liberal reforms, the private sector has drastically reduced the workers’ wages. The very same policies have now influenced the judges. There is a class bias in the judicial verdict. He sought legislation to rectify the wrong. He said the approach ought to be to make the non-organised workers organised and provide them the rights instead of withdrawing the rights.

Earlier the Court has said that "employees have no fundamental right to strike," that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to "effective collective bargaining," that strikes cannot be justified "in the present-day situation" either for a "just or unjust cause," and that the strike weapon "does more harm than any justice."

Justices M B Shah and and A.R. Lakshmanan said: "Government employees have no fundamental, legal, moral or equitable right to go on strike." The Attorney General for India, Soli Sorabjee, spoke against the apex court's observation that there was no moral or equitable right to go on strike.

He has termed the order as "uncalled for" and "beyond comprehension". He said, the right of collective bargaining, including the right to strike, was an invaluable entitlement of workers and employees won through years of toil and struggle. There could be "horrendous situations in which the employees have no effective mechanism for redressal of their grievances and are left with no option but to resort to strike."

The Communist Party of India (CPI) has sought a review of the ruling that Government employees have no fundamental, legal, moral or equitable right to go on strike by a full bench of the Supreme Court. The party described the ruling as a "judicial assault'' on the democratic rights of workers and employees who had won those rights, including the right to strike, through more than a hundred years of sacrifices and bitter struggles in India and in the world.

Questions are being asked as to what happens when the authorities arbitrarily and unilaterally deprive the employees of long existing benefits and facilities, and then refuse to have any talk or negotiation with associations and unions, which exist under legal provision and also the Constitutional right to Freedom of Association. Both collective bargaining and right to strike exist both in the Conventions adopted by the International Labour Organisation and ratified by the Government of India, as well as in legislations such as the Industrial Disputes Act.

The order implies that employees do not have any constitutional or statutory right or moral and equitable justification to go on strike. This order is opposed to the modern India's historical experience of worker agitations and strikes, and the assertion of the right to strike. It has rightly been said that if what the two-judge bench is really true, then India of 2003 cannot claim to be a democracy with any kind of regard for its working people. It would be an authoritarian state out of step with the International Labour Organisation's Conventions on "Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise" and "The Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively", which India has not ratified.

It may help do away with the economic loss and inconvenience, but it also curtails the workers' right to air their grievance said, Tarun Das, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry. Also the president of the Punjab and Haryana, Chamber of Commerce and Industry has issued a statement does not support the Supreme Court judgement against the workers right to strike.
The Attorney General has shown the way, legislature will have to undo the damage done by this apex court order.