CPI-M mulls essential service status for IT industry

KOLKATA: With West Bengal fast emerging as an IT destination, veteran CPI-M leader Jyoti Basu said on Friday that his party was considering whether the industry should be treated as an essential service.

"Nothing has been finalised as yet. It has been suggested for now that the IT sector should be treated as an essential service," he told reporters after a meeting of the CPI-M state secretariat here.

"If IT employees are to go on strike at all, the norms followed in essential services during the strike should be adhered to," he said.

Basu's comment will be a boost to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's keenness to keep the IT industry out of the purview of strikes because of his initiatives to bring more investments to West Bengal.

The comments came a couple of days after the CPI-M's labour arm CITU alleged that IT firms were flouting labour laws and said there could be strikes in the IT industry on the ground that it was not classified an essential service.

CITU made the allegation after top brass of the IT industry held a closed door meeting here on Tuesday to discuss how its move to establish worker's rights in the sector would affect their operations. They expressed apprehension at the possibility of coercive action after the formation of an IT workers' union later this month.

Asked whether IT would be included within the purview of the December 14 nation-wide general strike called by Left trade unions and organisations, Basu said the decision on this would be taken by CITU on December 12.

The chiefs of IT firms had indirectly opposed the formation of a workers' union saying the companies can take care of their employees better than anyone else and each company could ably handle its own affairs.

Basu defended the right of IT employees to form an association with the rider that "the right to strike should not be exercised in the way it is done in other services".

He said CITU leaders were interacting with employees in the IT industry here on this issue.