6 months ago
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Construction Workers’ Federation of India (CWFI) has questioned the caller motorboat of the Digital Labour Chowk Portal/App, the constitution of Labour Felicitation Centres (LCFCs), and the caller Online Building and Construction Workers Cess Collection Portal by the Union Labour Ministry.
The federation said each specified schemes are being implemented without consultations with the commercialized unions and are intended to ‘de-unionise’ operation workers and assistance employers. Citing “fundamental flaws” and “anti-worker implications” of the caller measures, the CWFI demanded the Centre to instantly halt the roll-out of the schemes.
The CWFI said the technology-driven initiatives are not steps towards idiosyncratic empowerment oregon welfare, but a top-down bureaucratic workout designed to prioritise information postulation and surveillance implicit the statutory rights and participatory governance of operation workers. CWFI wide caput U.P. Joseph said successful a connection that these initiatives are a poorly disguised distraction from the cardinal nonaccomplishment of the authorities to efficaciously registry workers and disburse billions of rupees owed to them nether the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act.
“The authorities is spending resources connected gathering integer gates portion leaving the vault locked. A digitised postulation portal is utterly useless if the wealth continues to beryllium idle owed to governmental and bureaucratic inertia, and corruption,” Mr. Joseph said.
He said the Digital Labour Chowk App is intended to promote de-unionisation by substituting a regulated, integer matching strategy for corporate bargaining spaces. “The request for integer literacy and smartphone ownership actively exacerbates the integer divide, excluding the astir vulnerable, illiterate, and remotely located workers from payment entree and leaving the unorganised bulk behind,” helium said, adding that the app volition present algorithmic control, subjecting workers to surveillance and deployment decisions volition beryllium taken without transparency oregon national oversight.
The LCFCs, helium said, are tools for authorities power and sanitisation of organising spaces. “The centres chiefly relation arsenic transportation points for authorities schemes, focusing connected formally classifying workers arsenic beneficiaries alternatively of intervening successful labour instrumentality violations, enforcing on-site information standards, oregon facilitating corporate negotiations connected wages and moving conditions.,” helium said.
