GUWAHATI, Sept 1 - The Assam Tribune Employees� Union (ATEU) will resort to a Raj Bhavan yatra at 10 am on September 4 in protest against the Centre�s move to scrap the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955 and include it under the Wage Code.
The ATEU members will meet Governor Jagdish Mukhi at Raj Bhavan here and submit a memorandum addressed to the President of India.
�The journalist and non-journalist workers of media houses were given special status by the working journalists Act soon after the country�s independence at the initiative of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as a recognition of the importance of the media personnel as the fourth estate of democracy. It was on the basis of this piece of legislation that the journalist and non-journalist workers have since been getting various benefits under the wage boards mandated by the Act,� ATEU president Siva Prasad Deka and general secretary Jiten Kalita said in a statement.
Asserting that the Narendra Modi government�s move to scrap the Act was aimed at placating the corporate owners of media houses and fulfil the BJP�s narrow agenda while pushing the workers into a bleak future, the ATEU said that it would continue to oppose the regressive move of the Centre tooth and nail.
�We will continue to fight such anti-people policies of the Centre and urge all concerned to join hands to make the Centre see reason and desist from repealing the Act. To merge the Act together with 43 labour laws under four wage codes is a direct assault on the rights of the journalist and non-journalist workers,� it said.
The ATEU also called for constitution of a new wage board at the earliest.
