Right to Association & Collective Bargaining
Since the 1990s the economy is being opened up increasingly for free play of capital. This has created space for manipulation of existing laws and legal machinery that had been established through hard-won battles of the working class over the past century to establish labour standards for industrial labour to facilitate interests of capital. As a result of the consolidation of imperialist forces and the institutionalisation of neo-liberal policies there has been an ever growing exposure of domestic capital to international competition, which has reinforced the offensive on labour by employers directly as well as through the use of coercive and brutal power of the state. On one hand, existing labour laws are being flagrantly violated by employers, including where the government is the employer, and on the other hand any attempt at protest by workers are more often than not violently thwarted by the employers with direct or indirect collusion with the state machinery.
Many of the affiliates of NTUI in the formal sector have been at the forefront in struggles against violation of labour laws across the country. From the historic takeover of the Kamani Tubes as a worker cooperative in 1989 by the Kamani Employees Union (KEU) to the struggles in the auto hubs of Chennai for union recognition, in chemical industries in Gujarat for regularisation of contract workers, for establishment of rights of construction workers in Tamil Nadu, and other struggles led by many unions in the unorganised sector for definition of rights and implementation of basic labour laws to these sectors have paved the way of coming together of these unions to constitute the NTUI.