People's Democracy

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has welcomed the joint decision by all the trade unions in the coal industry to observe a three day strike in all the coal mines and establishments in the country on December 3-5. It has also been decided to serve the strike notice on November 15.

According to the CITU, the anti-coal industry and anti-worker policy of the BJP-led NDA government is the major issue before the 6 lakh coal workers in the country. This is what led all the major trade union federations in the coal industry to decide on the three-day strike as a preparatory stage for going in for a long-drawn struggle.

The government of India has been recklessly allowing coal import by drastically slashing down the import duty even on ordinary coal which has adversely affected the domestic production. Simultaneously, with the deceptive plea of increasing coal production capacity, the government has decided to allow private sector and MNCs in coal-mining. It has already brought before the parliament the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill as an enabling provision for this misdeed. It is noteworthy that on earlier occasions when the government’s tried to press its privatisation bill in parliament, the united move by the coal trade unions compelled the then government to backtrack. The federations, while declaring the three day strike action, demanded immediate withdrawal of the retrograde bill and also restoration of the import duty on coal to the 1989-90 levels.

Moreover, long overdue wage arrears following the National Coal Wage Agreement (NCWA-VI) have not yet been paid to the coal workers and many provisions of the agreement are still not implemented despite the fact that the concerned agreement is going to expire within a couple of months. Despite repeated persuasion, the Coal India management is yet to agree to full payment of such arrears at the earliest for which it is agreement-bound. The federations have demanded immediate and total implementation of the NCWA-VI including full payment of the arrears, besides other demands.

The CITU has appealed to the coal unions all over the country to carry the message of struggle to the grass-roots level through an intensive campaign and prepare for the united strike action. It also called upon the coal workers to join the strike with a firm determination, to press for fulfilment of all their just demands and in defence of the public sector coal industry, defeating all vacillations. (INN)