Labour Min convenes meeting with unions, industry next week

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Press Trust of India New Delhi
Last Updated : Jan 06 2015 | 9:05 PM IST
The Labour Ministry has convened a meeting with trade unions and other stakeholders on January 13 to address issues such as price rise, disinvestment and privatisation.
"Ours is a pro-labour attitude government because the industrial relation between industry and workers should be in harmony. I wanted to call a tripartite meeting on January 13 of the stakeholders and trade unions," Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya told reporters here.
Trade unions in August had submitted a 10-point agenda to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley highlighting issues like issue of price rise and opposed disinvestment and privatisation.
Emphasising for a consensus building among industry and workforce to sort out various issues, the minister said that dialogue will continue with trade unions.
On Coal India employees going on a five-day strike from today, Dattatreya said: "Strike should be the last weapon. There should always be dialogue."
He said discussions are going on with Coal India employee unions and the Coal Ministry to sort out the issues concerning the strike and whenever the necessity comes, the Labour Ministry will intervene.

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The minister also said that government intended to set up a vocational training university for workers.
"One of the major initiative for the workers' class-- a vocational training institute. Our ministry is also preparing a proposal for setting-up a national workers' vocational university which will provide higher level qualification of international standards," he added.
Dattatreya said Germany will be the knowledge partner to set up the university.
The Labour Ministry in a statement said that recent studies have shown that around only 18 per cent of engineering graduates are employable due to lack of hands on practice.
The university will leverage experiential learning, provide pathways for upward mobility and provide necessary framework and expertise in the areas of research and institutional development for vocational training.
It is proposed that the university would have main campus at Hyderabad in Telengana with regional campus at Ludhiana, Kolkata, Gujarat and Chennai. Land and premises are already available at Ludhiana, Kolkata and Chennai.
The minister also said that the retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) would launch a nationwide campaign to create awareness about activation of Universal (PF) Account Number (UAN).
EPFO had issued over four crore UANs in July last year but few lakh subscribers have activated their UANs. For activating UAN, a subscriber has to login online. But a large number of them may not be tech savvy to do that.

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First Published: Jan 06 2015 | 9:05 PM IST

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