Text of Declaration, National Convention Of Workers (March 2025)

Pyarelal Bhawan, Near ITO, New Delhi

18th March, 2025

This National Convention of Workers being held in New Delhi on 18th March 2025, at the call of the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Sectoral National Federations/Associations representing all sections of the working people of our country, takes stock of the alarming situation before the workers and all sections of common people in our country, because of the anti-worker, anti-people policies being pursued by the NDA government at the Centre for the third term.

After managing to come back to power at the centre for the third term through a coalition arrangement the Govt has become atrociously desperate to push through its corporate servile policy machinations on the lives and livelihood of the overwhelming majority of toiling populace. This is resulting in continuing phenomenon of deepening and widening impoverishment, spread of hunger and malnutrition below destitution level, skyrocketing unemployment and joblessness together with drastic degeneration of quality of jobs to inhumane level and what-not. Simultaneously, the profit by the corporate and big-business got multiplied to all time high. Even the latest official Economic survey, could not hide the blatant bankruptcy of the perverse policy regime. It exposes that the wages of the informal economy workers have fallen in 2023-2024 from the level of those in the year 2017-2018. On the contrary the employment-increase was only 1.5 percent. Casual male workers were drawing earnings between Rs.203 to Rs.242 whereas women were getting between Rs.128 to Rs.159. The very same report also reflects that the profits of corporate sector grew by 22.3 percent.
Inequalities are rising in our country. 5 percent top population owns 70 percent of wealth whereas for the 50 percent people from the bottom, their share in wealth is 3 percent only. Richest Indians are richer than those of the European billionaires whereas poorest Indians are poorer than Madagascar with poverty having increased by 17 percent during more than ten years of present ruling regime. 90 percent families were termed poorer than international standards in 2018 as per international studies conducted by reputed institutions.

In its third term of governance, this Govt. has become furiously over-active in implementing the Labour Codes, which is a comprehensive blue-print of imposing conditions of virtual slavery on the working people as a whole. These codes would snatch from them almost all rights and entitlements of workers at their workplaces. The CTUs/Federations take it as a serious challenge to all the basic rights of the workers relating to defined working conditions including working hours, minimum wages, social security etc. and also their collective rights to unionization, recognition, collective bargaining, agitations/struggles and any form of collective expressions of protests including right to strike etc. being sought to be snatched away, together with atrocious and vindictive punitive measures against any collective dissents by the workers. In essence the Labour Codes are a blue-print to impose conditions of virtual slavery on the working people in the interests of the corporate/employers