The term "Professional Worker" is taken from the ILO, which defines it as any salaried employee who has a higher level of education and skills and who manages a part of an enterprise. These employees are also called managerial and supervisory staff.  The meaning of these terms must be understood in the context of the country to which they are applied.

In Indian labour legislation, there is a term called "workmen". Workmen are those who do not have any form of managerial and supervisory designation and earn less than US $ 45 a month. So in manufacturing Industry almost every seventh employee is a non workmen. Also with the higher levels of technology, even direct workers (for example, engineers in a computer company or those operating a 500 MW machine) are not workmen.

These salaried employees are sometimes refereed to by the Government as "non unionised staff" (even though they are unionised) or "other workers". They have no labour rights. All their strikes are illegal. They have no right to compensation for accident/injury while on duty. In most cases, for the professional workers, even the bare minimum facilities of office space and deduction of union subscription from salary and holding meetings within the premises are not allowed. The right to collective bargaining is denied. The Indian Government has not ratified the ILO conventions -  Protection of the Right to Organise (Convention 87) and The right to Collective Bargaining (Convention 98)

Inspite of all these handicaps PWTUC has organised almost a million professional workers. The major affiliates of PWTUC are the All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC) and the National Confederation of Officers Associations of Central Public Sector Undertakings (NCOA)

The major demands of PWTUC are:

• Appropriate legislative framework to regulate relations between the employers and Professional Workers,
• Right to enter into collective contracts and legal machinery to enforce the obligations of the parties to the contract;
• Right to equitable share in the industrial surplus;
• Right to adequate terminal benefits;
• Security of employment;
• Right to representation at the Consultative Forums set up by the Government;
• Right to representation at corporate level and plant level management;
• Right to information;
• Recognition as a Central Trade Union with membership in the Indian Labour Conference (a national tripartite body)

We appeal to the  fraternity of salaried employees to extend their support to us in our struggle.

You can do this by doing the following:

1. Ask the Government of India to ratify the ILO Conventions - Protection of the Right to Organise (Convention 87) and The right to Collective Bargaining (Convention 98)
2. Ask the Government of India to recognise PWTUC.
3. Ask the ILO to be loyal to its own standards and conventions and not to that of the Government of India. ILO can do a lot more than it does -  which is just to ignore the problem.

For more details see:   Professional Workers in a state of limbo

Major Affiliates:

• National Confederation of Officers Associations of Central Public Sector Undertakings (NCOA)
• All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC)

Geocities