Manufacturing Industries Workers(Terms and Cond
itions of Service) Act was enacted to implement the wage scale and fringe bene fits determined by the wage commission. Restriction and ban on Tr ade Union Activities: After liberation of Bangladesh workers have enjoyed a great deal of freedom and trade union rights.The most of the plant level trad e unions had joined with the ruling party trade union center Jatiyo Sramik League.M any new plant level trade unions were registered.The trade union was a powerful me nace to get authority on factories,mills and establishment abandon by previous owner and subsequently taken over by the government.The political local elite had joined in trade union to cont rol and have benefits of the taken over industries and establishmen ts. Traditionally most of the workers were from outside of locality and from different di stricts and now local pe ople want to have job there for industrial workers were better pa id then informal sector. There were many riots between locals and non-locals in different industrial districts.Th e worst situation had arise at Chittagong and Tongi industrial district s.The local ruling party leadership to grab the unions there had started agitation against non- local workers for the trade union leadership were from non-locals.To gain c ontrol over trade union the local elite gains manifold. The first is they can buy the products in mill rate and sell in market in high rate,second they can supply raw materials to m ill in high rate and third by inducting their 4Page 4 of 15 own people as workers and employees they ca n have control over th e establishment and in local politics. The cotton yarn,fabric,jute product,butte r oil and many other products mill rate and market rate differ very muc h. One could become millionaire overnight by having a dealership of Kohinoor Chemical Co mpany, a cosmetic and toiletries industries or have a allotment of quota for cotton yarn from Muslin Cotton Mills of Kapasia or quota of allotment of matches from Dhaka Match Factory of Postogola. Agenda and issues of Trade Union Movement There was a shift of government in A ugust 1975, which was followed by a shift in economic policy as well. The socialistic pol icy of the Mujib government was abandon and privatisation process has start., which were initiated by the succeeding government of Ziaur Rahman. Privatisation started with di sinvestment and denationalisation of state owned enterprises (SOE). All the governme nt till now continued the same economic policy. The present Awami League government in order to make the privatisation process of SOE’s faster formed a new institu tion called The Privatis ation Broad, which is entrusted with the responsibility of priva tising SOE’s identified for privatisation. Among disinvested industries a government survey fr om ministry of industries has found a few of them only running fully, some are partially a nd a large number are not functioning at all. Work force in those industries has drastically reduced. The leading se ctors like jute and textile where traditionally trade union movement was strong got weaken due to loss of job of their members. To protect job and trade union rights tr ade unions got united and has formed Sramik Karmachari Oikya Parishad (SKOP) in 1983 and launched a series of action programme to press their demands includi ng job security, higher wages, trade union rights and others. In 1984, government and
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