A massive countrywide strike—‘Bharat Bandh’—has been announced for July 9, with over 25 crore (250 million) workers expected to participate. The protest, called by a joint platform of ten central trade unions, is being positioned as a nationwide resistance to the government’s “anti-worker, anti-farmer, and pro-corporate” policies.
Workers from across formal and informal sectors—including banking, insurance, mining, construction, postal services, and public sector enterprises—are set to join the bandh. The unions have called on employees and labourers across the country to make the protest a “grand success,” with widespread disruptions anticipated in essential services.
The strike has also received strong backing from farmers’ organisations, including the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and the joint platform of agricultural labour unions, who have pledged rural mobilisation in support of the workers.
The call for the bandh comes from a coalition of major trade unions: AITUC, INTUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, and UTUC. Union leaders from various sectors—including NMDC Ltd, non-coal mining, steel, state government departments, and other public enterprises—have already submitted strike notices.
The unions are protesting against a range of issues including privatisation of public sector units and services, widespread outsourcing, increasing contractualisation of labour, and casual employment practices. They accuse the government of ignoring a 17-point charter of demands submitted to Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya last year.
Key demands include urgent action on unemployment, filling vacant government posts, boosting job creation, expanding MGNREGA workdays and wages, and establishing a similar urban employment guarantee scheme.
Union leaders have criticised the government’s continued delay in convening the Indian Labour Conference—dormant for the past decade—while accusing it of pushing forward with the implementation of four controversial labour codes. According to them, the new codes threaten to curtail workers’ rights, weaken trade unions, extend working hours, and dilute penalties for labour law violations by employers.
The statement also highlights rising unemployment, inflation, declining real wages, and cuts in government spending on education, healthcare, and basic services—all of which, the unions say, are deepening socio-economic inequalities.
Further raising the political stakes, the trade unions accused the government of targeting migrant workers and manipulating electoral processes, citing Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls as a case in point. They also condemned what they describe as the misuse of constitutional institutions to stifle dissent, pointing to restrictive laws like the Public Security Bill in Maharashtra and similar legislation in other states such as Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
Warning of growing disenfranchisement, union leaders said current policies are pushing vulnerable communities to the brink and undermining democratic rights.
The July 9 bandh is the latest in a series of large-scale worker mobilisations, following earlier strikes on November 26, 2020, March 28–29, 2022, and February 16, 2024.
