The Centre is confident of meeting employment creation target of ten million jobs during the current financial year, Union Labour Secretary P D Shenoy said.
Shenoy told PTI on the sidelines of a workshop organized by the International Labour Organisation and the Ministry of Labour in Kolkata on Wednesday, that eight million jobs had already been created in the current fiscal, adding that the target for the Tenth Plan was to create 50 million jobs during the five-year period.
Dismissing fears that globalisation would lead to loss of jobs both in the formal and informal sectors, Shenoy said that more employment opportunities were coming up in various areas like agriculture, communication, and information technology.
Praising the role played by trade unions in the present scenario, he said it was heartening to note that they had adjusted and re-adjusted themselves and moved from the position of conflict to that of cooperation.
He said that the trade unions had realised the need of the hour was that of skill upgradation and higher productivity.
Earlier, speaking at the workshop, Shenoy was less scathing on trade unions saying that it was not fair to put the blame only on labour for number of mandays lost in the country.
Quoting a study carried out by National Labour Institute, he said that employers of late had been more assertive and outspoken, which had resulted in an increase in the numbers of lock-outs.
Shenoy said that this had affected sustained production activity and improvement in productivity.
Resident director of ILO in India Herman van der Laan said that the key concern in the Indian labour market was the backlog of cases pending before the labour courts.
There were approximately 500,000 cases pending before the labour courts and more 28,000 of them were over ten years old.
The ILO executive said that the companies and trade unions should go for the conciliation mode of resolving disputes rather than going to the labour courts.
