Right to Work as a Fundamental Right
By
A. Rajendra Prasad
One of the challenging missions of any Government is to grant constitutional status to "Right to work" as a fundamental right under our Constitution. The concept of "Right to Work" has two positive dimensions. (1) The right to 'obtain' employment and (2) the right to 'retain' employment. The second aspect of right has already acquired legal character to a larger extent in our industrial jurisprudence and the present task is to what extent the constitutional guarantee is effective if the "Right to Work" is made as a fundamental right.
The right to 'obtain employment', as it appears to be, is a 'general or bare' right in its liberal sense due to lack of vacuum in it. However, the framers of our Constitution were aware of the responsibility of the State to provide 'right to work" and they propounded this ambition in Article 41 of our Constitution. as a Directive Principle of State Policy, which envisages that the State shall within the limits ....