Bengal wants jute mill trade unions to back off

Are the days of trade unions in the jute mills are numbered?

The West Bengal labour minister Md Amin said today that mill labour unions should solve their problem internally rather than with help of outside trade union leaders.

The best solution to labour problems in jute mills is that the labourers themselves take up the problem to the management.

"Workers can understand the problem in a better way than any outsider," he said.

Amin was discussing labour related issues in jute mills at a seminar organised by Indian Jute Mills association.

Commenting on the deteriorating relation between the unions and the owners, Amin pointed out that there is a need to enlighten workers so that they could determine their own fate.

The deputy chairman of IJMA, R K Poddar, agreed with Amin.

He said outsiders posed problems for the jute mill management.

According to Poddar, trade unions try to implement uniform wage laws for all the mills but this is not realistic.

"The financial strength of all the jute mills are not same. So beyond the tripartite agreement between the IJMA, state government and the unions, we are looking for bipartite settlements," he said.

IJMA said wages being paid by West Bengal jute mills are extremely high at Rs 270 per day inclusive of all benefits as on February 2005.

"The wage is mainly due to continuously increasing DA and the industry does not have any capacity to pay such wages without commensurate increase in productivity," the IJMA status paper says.

However, the representatives of trade unions alleged that most mill owners were not paying the wages to the labourers claimed by IJMA.

Amin said the state government is looking at a jute policy for Bengal The Union textile ministry was working on a comprehensive jute policy and the state policy will be in addition to that.

He advised the mill owners to pay gratuity to workers by raising loans if it helped raise productivity.

"Mills can pay the interest from the increase in productivity," he added.