Ensure a Minimum Wage of Rs 42,000 to All!
Ensure Double Payment for Overtime work!
Modi government dreamt that workers’ struggles and trade unions could be eliminated if four anti-labour, corporate codes are implemented. Even before the ink signing the implementation of Codes from April 1st was dried, workers revolts spread like a prairie fire from one industrial city to another. The uprising of thousands and thousands of workers started from a public sector establishment, the IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Ltd), Panipat, spread to workers of private corporate and multinational sectors in Manesar. The rebellion spread to Surat in Gujarat and then to Noida in UP. All industrial belts and clusters around Delhi, including Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, etc., are burning. The flames of workers struggle is engulfing the entire North India and is refusing to die down. The abnormal increase of gas prices due to American-Israel war on Iran has only added fuel to the fire. The video of workers exodus to their native places, comparable only to the period of Corona, has become viral.
These are not struggles systematically planned and orgnaised by trade unions. Neither the rebelling workers are members of any trade union. It is a series of workers outbursts against the system of brutal exploitation by capital, against starvation wages and wage theft, against forced labour for 12 hours and more and for demanding double payment of overtime work over and above 8 hours. Workers are rising spontaneously, knowingly or unknowingly, against various cruel facets of the Labour Codes.
Workers who resorted to strike are not from one or two companies, they are from several corporate and multinational companies. Not a hundred or two hundred workers but thousands and thousands of workers. All young workers and none of them are permanent. They are the most unorgnaised workers called by various names like contract, trainee, daily wagers and what not. They are the workers paid a pittance of Rs 10,000 to 11000 per month after working for 12-14 hours a day. More importantly, they are the migrants from states like Bihar and Jharkhand ended up in Delhi NCR in search of jobs and livelihood. These are the workers who are chosen to be employed expecting not to voice any dissent due to their status of extreme poverty in their native states.
It is these workers who marched on the streets, demanding a minimum wage of not less than Rs 20,000 per month. They were propelled by the most cruel and brutal manifestations of the Codes. Perturbed by the unprecedented rebellion of workers, Modi and Yogi are trying to invent the hands of Urban naxals and Pakistani Conspiracy in the struggle instead of acknowledging the genuine grievance of unaffordable wages. Modi attempts to use the same old failed tactic of calling the militant farmers movement as Khalistanis to discredit and defame the movement in order to prepare the ground to brutally suppress it subsequently.
But, workers outbursts go on unabated braving severe oppression. It springs up from another industrial cluster if appeared to have ended in one industrial cluster. It springs up from another industrial city if appeared to have ended in one city. Thus, the flames of workers revolts have engulfed major industrial cities of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Punjab. Irrespective of the nature of industry, workers of all sectors right from garment sector to electronic sector are on a war path.
It is a movement of a single demand for a minimum wage of not less than Rs 20,000 a month. In some industries of central sector, the demand is for Rs 30,000. They also demand double wages for the overtime work as they are inhumanly forced to work for 12 hours a day.
But, the Codes advocate determination of floor wages in place of minimum wages and awards a legal sanction for 12 hours work-day. The ongoing revolts of workers is precisely against such clauses of the Anti-Labour Corporate Codes! The series of workers outbursts effectively expose and reject the anti-labour Codes.
Such revolts are bound to escalate and spread all over the country if the Modi led BJP government did not mend its ways, taking cue from the spontaneous workers unrest. If Modi government failed to so, it is inevitable that it will face the music.
The minimum wage notification at the end of March was struck down and a new notification of 21 percent increase in wages was declared by the Yogi government on 17 April. Still, an unskilled employee in a highly industrialised city like NOIDA is entitled to get only Rs 13,690. For a worker paying 4,000 – 7,000 as house rent with an annual increase of Rs 500 monthly, paying 3,000-4,000 as monthly school fees, recently pierced with sky-rocketing gas prices touching even Rs 3000 - 4000, how can Rs 13000 monthly wages is sufficient to meet the workers’ basic needs of livelihood. Hence, Not less than Rs 20,000 is not an empty slogan but without which one cannot lead a life, leave alone a decent life, in a city like NOIDA or Manesar. This is the root cause of the recent spurt of unrelenting spontaneous workers strikes which cannot be put off without increasing wages.
The Haryana state government has declared 35 percent hike in minimum wages. Still, it has declared only Rs 15,220 as minimum wage for an unskilled worker in a city like Manesar which is a centre of global capital in the NCR region. How can a worker manage a life without Rs 20,000? Hence, the dissent is growing and there is no sign of fading away.
Significantly, UP and Haryana minimum wage notifications now, forced by the series of workers struggles, are the first notifications on wages under the new Code on Wages 2019 in the entire country. It has belied all tall claims of Modi that wages will reach its ‘rooftop’ when new Codes are implemented.
The state governments, including the BJP led major states UP and Haryana, have let loose severe repression on struggling workers. The workers continue their struggle relentlessly braving lathi charges, teargas shells, endless arrests, languishing in jails and house arrest of trade union leaders. Thousands of workers are put behind bars in the National Capital Region (NCR). Still, the struggle goes on unabated.
The male police has brutally attacked the women workers on struggles. The police and the private industrial militia, the bouncers, have joined hands to unleash extreme violence on workers.
The series of workers struggles has not only exposed the four anti-Labour Codes but also the nexus between the BJP led state and union governments and the corporate houses. Still the struggles are on unabated and shows no sign of dying down.
The working class of the country and the world have stood in solidarity against the America-Israel war on Iran and Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine. The Modi government has surrendered before the imperialist America and their president Donald Trump. Because of the BJP’s surrender before America, the country is unable to ward off the LPG gas crisis and the working class suffers the most because of rising gas prices and the inflation.
Industrial accidents are rampant. Right from Andhra, Tamil Nadu to Delhi and UP, workers are dying because of the corporate greed for profit that refuses to provide safe working conditions. The corporates are habituated to violate all safety norms causing deaths after deaths. Industrial accidents and deaths of hundreds of workers across the country has also emerged as a major problem in this May Day.
The scheme workers, including ASHA, Anganwadi and Mid day Meal workers, are being systematically denied the status of a worker and are being denied minimum wages and associated social security benefits. We resolve to scale up our struggles to secure the demands of scheme workers.
The sanitation workers all over the country are struggling against paltry wages, systematic social and economic subjugation and for permanency. We resolve to carry forward the struggle to newer heights.
The ongoing workers upsurge is only a signal for the possible waves and waves of struggles against the Modi led BJP government, its nexus with corporates and against Labour Codes.
On this May Day 2026, AICCTU calls upon the working class to firmly defend its rights, particularly the right of 8-hour workday and to stall the implementation of Labour Codes!
AICCTU calls upon the entire working class of the country to rise in solidarity with the struggling workers and to launch fresh waves of struggles against the Corporate Codes and the oppression on workers.
AICCTU Calls upon the working class of the country to fight for –
- Halt the Crackdown on Workers Struggling for Genuine Demands! Release all arrested workers unconditionally and forthwith! Release the arrested trade union leaders!
- Declare Rs 42,000 per month and Rs 1500 per day as minimum wages!
- Get rid of the system of 12-hour work-day! Pay double wages for overtime work above 8 hours!
- Eliminate the system of contract, honorarium, daily wage, apprenticeship, trainee, fixed term employment and make them all permanent!
- Scrap the anti-Labour, Corporate Codes!
-- Issued by All India Central Council of Trade Unions
