The national conference of CPI labour arm All India Trade Union Congress (Aituc) under way in Kerala has seen the RSS-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh oppose several “anti-worker” policies of the Narendra Modi government.

Kerala BMS president C. Unnikrishnan Unnithan, who addressed the five-day conference’s opening session as a guest speaker on Friday, opposed the Centre’s efforts to exclude the trade unions from discussions of labour issues.

He was referring to the Centre’s failure to hold the Indian Labour Conference (ILC) — a tripartite consultative mechanism between the government, trade unions and industry — since 2015 and, instead, organise a “National Labour Conference” (NLC) of government officials in Tirupati last August.

According to the International Labour Organisation’s conventions, all labour issues must be discussed at tripartite forums of the government, employees and employers.

“I pointed out that no ILC meeting has been held since 2015 and (such consultations) are now limited to officials. As we said earlier, this is the first time in history that the trade unions are being excluded (from such consultations),” Unnithan told The Telegraph on Monday.

“The BMS believes that nothing should be done to weaken the consultative mechanism and that doing so would eventually destabilise the trade union system. But, unfortunately, that is what is happening.”

The trade unions have also criticised as “anti-worker” four labour codes — on wages; industrial relations; social security; and occupational safety, health and working conditions — that the government has enacted by merging a host of labour laws.

While the labour code was passed in Parliament in 2019, the others were passed the following year. But their implementation has been delayed partly because of staunch opposition from industry.

The BMS has welcomed much of the content of the labour codes while raising concerns at certain segments of the industrial relations code that make it easier for employers to retrench employees.

“We don’t oppose the government for the sake of opposing it, but we never hold back where objections and criticisms are called for,” Unnithan said.

Rajya Sabha MP and CPI central secretariat member Binoy Viswam welcomed the BMS’s position on certain issues relating to labour rights although the RSS-backed body usually stays away from general strikes.

“It has been our practice to invite leaders from all trade unions to our national conferences. Their leader (Unnithan) attended our inaugural session and spoke against certain policies of the NDA government,” Viswam told this newspaper on Monday.

The Aituc event in Alappuzha is being attended by about 2,000 delegates from across the country. Among the key issues that have come up during the discussions is the demand for a reversion to the old pension scheme, under which the government paid a retired worker every month an amount equal to half their last-drawn salary.