JULY 25, 2024
Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge on Wednesday said that the 14-hour workday proposal is not for all IT companies or all IT-enabled service companies and that it will be discussed. “The industry-specific demands that are being put forward to the Labour Department will be discussed. There is no need to have any knee-jerk reaction,” he said while speaking to reporters.
“As far as I am aware, it is not for all IT companies or all IT-enabled service companies,” he said, adding that he was not sure if the people who have started an online campaign against the proposal are aware of the complete rules proposed in the Bill.”
The Karnataka government is considering a proposal by the IT sector to increase the working hours. However, the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees’ Union (KITU) has opposed the move and urged the Siddaramaiah government to reconsider its plans to extend the working hours of the IT/ITeS/BPO sector.
The proposal to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishment Act was presented in a recent meeting called by the labour department with various stakeholders in the industry, the union said in a release.
Labour Minister Santosh Lad, and officials from the Department of Labour and IT-BT Ministry attended the meeting, in which the representatives of the union took part. The union strongly opposed the proposed amendment which, it said, poses an “attack on the basic right of any worker to have a personal life.”
The union said the proposed new bill attempts to normalise a 14-hour work day as the existing act only allows a maximum of 10 hours of work per day, including overtime. This amendment will allow the companies to go for a two-shift system instead of the currently existing three-shift system, and one-third of the workforce will be thrown out of their employment, it claimed.
“The Karnataka government in their hunger, to please their corporate bosses, completely neglects the most fundamental right of any individual, the right to live,” the union said, adding that this amendment shows that the Government of Karnataka is not ready to consider the workers as human beings who need personal and social life to survive. Instead, it considers them as only machinery to increase the profit of the corporates to whom it serves, it added.
The union pointed out that this amendment comes at a period when the world starts to accept the fact that increased working hours are negatively impacting productivity. “KITU calls upon all the IT/ITeS sector employees to unify and come forward to resist this inhuman attempt to impose slavery on us,” it said.
Courtesy: Business Today
