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* The Indian Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Labour Member): Sir, I move:
“ That the Bill further to amend the Indian Trade Unions Act, 1926, be circulated for the purpose of eliciting opinion thereon. ”
The motion is merely for circulation for the purpose of eliciting public opinion on this measure. That being so, it seems to me unnecessary to take the time of the House to deal in any detailed manner with the provisions which are embodied in this Bill. It is enough, I think, to tell the House what are the main features of the Bill and what has led Government to undertake this particular piece of legislation.
The Bill has three important features. In the first place, the Bill seeks to compel an employer to recognise a trade union. In the second place, the Bill imposes certain conditions on a trade union in order to make the trade union, if I may say so, worthy of recognition by an employer. The third feature of the Bill is to make non-recognition by an employer of a trade union, which has observed all the conditions prescribed in this measure and which has therefore qualified itself for recognition, an offence which is made punishable by law.
As I said, it is unnecessary to discuss the merits of this measure. The motion is for circulation which obviously means that the provisions embodied in the Bill by the Government at the present stage are only tentative. There is no finality about it, and Government do not propose to make these provisions final unless they have received the opinions of leaders of labour, employers, Provincial Governments and other parties who are concerned in this measure. The Bill may therefore be quite different from what it is now, when Government has applied its
- Legislative Assembly Debates (Central), Vol. IV (1943), 13th November 1943, pp.
252-54.