On 16 June the trade union leaders received a letter from the Prime Minister's office requesting them to attend a meeting with him on 23 June. Though the notice was short, the union leaders welcomed the initiative. For them, the initiative - the PM himself getting involved in labour issues - was a departure from the set process.

On 23 June at around 5 pm, nine top trade union leaders of the country met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and handed him their memorandums.

They discussed issues of importance to the working class of India. The meeting was one of the first such meetings held after the formation of the new United Progressive Alliance government a month ago. The Prime Minister informed the trade union leaders that he believed in talks and assured them that before deciding on any labour issue he would take the union leaders into confidence.

Gurudas Dasgupta (AITUC), W R Varada Rajan (CITU), Girish Awasthy (BMS), Umraomal Purohit (HMS), Sanjeeva Reddy (INTUC), S R Sengupta (UTUC), Krishna Chakraborty (UTUC-LS), Devrajan (TUCC) and Naren Sen (NFITU) met the Prime Ministers along with social activist Swami Agnivesh who represented the Bandhua Mukti Morcha.

Generation of employment and people-oriented development was the major demand of the trade unions. D L Sachdeva of AITUC said their representative Gurudas Dasgupta told the Prime Minister that in order to meet the challenges of mounting unemployment it was essential to embark on a programme of massive government investment targeted to augment agriculture production, building and expanding social infrastructure, improving irrigation facilities, developing small and medium scale industries, and setting up new power generation stations. According to him, AITUC strongly believes that people-oriented development measures will help in creating more and more opportunities for employment.

"The new Prime Minister recognises the importance of working class," says Sanjeeva Reddy, president of INTUC. "The Prime Minister has assured us that he will look into the Job Guarantee Programme (15-20 days of assured jobs in a month) for workers in the unorganised sector," he adds. One of the major issues that INTUC highlighted at the meeting was amendment of the Companies Act. The INTUC feels that in the present situation of competitive environment, the capital and labour should work in close cooperation. The workers should also be involved in the policy-making process of the establishment and as such the Company Law should be amended to reserve at least 25 per cent of the equity to be subscribed by the employees and officers. They should also be given representation on the Board of Directors.

"The request of the trade unions to give a visible push to the Common Minimum Programme in the budget was well received by the Prime Minister," says Tapan Sen, Secretary of CITU. CITU in its representation strongly urged the Prime Minister that long-awaited legislative measures should be given utmost priority for ensuring that this basic principle is translated into action. Their major demands were for a Comprehensive Agricultural Workers Bill to guarantee minimum wages and to extend social protection to the vast multitude of agricultural labourers; the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill duly incorporating the unanimous inputs provided by all the central trade unions and a legislation to protect women workers from sexual harassment at workplaces as per the recommendations and guidelines issued by the Supreme Court as far back as in August 1997.

According to Girish Awasthy, deputy general secretary of BMS, the Prime Minister was cordial and friendly in his first meeting with the top trade union leaders. "The Prime Minister made it very clear that since the budget session is very near and there is only a short time to review the matters, it will be difficult for him to incorporate all the issues raised," says Awasthy.

The entire spectrum of trade union movement has emphasized that the government should take effective steps to negate the pernicious impact of - and clear the impasse created by - the Supreme Court judgment on ban on strike by government employees. The Common Minimum Programme adopted by the new government has unambiguously stated that the rights and benefits earned by workers, including the right to strike according to law, will not be taken away or curtailed.