People's Democracy

CPSTU Decides to Join Dec 14 Strike,

Rejects Govt “Guidelines” on Wage Negotiations

Swadesh Dev Roye

AN extended meeting of the Committee of Public Sector Trade Unions (CPSTU) was held at Bangalore on November 7-8, 2006. Around 400 delegates representing the different affiliated and independent trade unions functioning in the Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs) attended the meeting. It is worth noting that almost all CPSUs across the country were represented in the meeting.

The major agenda deliberated with focus in the meeting were the ongoing massive preparations for the countrywide general strike scheduled on December 14, 2006 at the call of the Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions and the anti-worker preconditions unilaterally imposed by the government in the name of guidelines for the forthcoming wage negotiations in CPSUs, impeding free and fair collective bargaining. 

The proceedings of the two-day extended meeting, held in the premises of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), were conducted by a presidium consisting of Swadesh Dev Roye (CITU), H Mahadevan (AITUC), R A Mittal (HMS), Michael B Fernandes (Joint Action Front, Bangalore) and A Rajeswara Rao (PSU Employees’ Coordination Committee, Hyderabad). M K Pandhe, Tapan Sen, Dipankar Mukherjee from the CITU centre also attended the meeting.

Amongst the striking features of the event were the very widespread representative character of the participants and their enthusiastic participation in the deliberations. The very big mobilisation of the HAL workers, who tirelessly worked as volunteers during the meeting days, was the single factor which contributed for the success of the meeting. 

SPIRITED DISCUSSION

M K Pandhe, president of CITU, formally placed the Background Note and it was followed by speeches by the central leaders of the constituents of the CPSTU. Around 50 representatives from amongst the delegates took part in the discussion.

The highlights of the discussions were the call for making the December 14 strike a grand success and expression of determined resolve to carry forward the fight against the onslaught of privatisation of CPSUs through different routes engineered by the government of the day. A very encouraging development noticed in the speeches was the ever-heightening understanding among the trade unions of permanent workers to effectively address the growing menace of contractorisation in the CPSUs. The meeting expressed serious concern at the continuously swelling number of ‘Executive’ category employees in the CPSUs on the one hand and on the other the continuously declining numbers of permanent workers. This disturbing situation is further aggravated with the phenomenon of constantly increasing engagement of huge number of contractor workers in the CPSUs and that too in the strategically important permanent and perennial nature operational activities. This is also seriously affecting the trade union movement in the sector and also ultimately the public sector entity of the undertakings.

Thus permanent workers are becoming acutely smaller in size compared to the combined numerical strength of officers and contractor workers in most CPSUs in the country. One of the consequences is that the permanent workers are fast loosing trade union strength as also the right to strike and the right to collective bargaining. The speakers were very candid in their firm assertion that it is high time to closely coordinate and cooperate with the trade unions of contractor workers. Moreover, the demand for recruitment of permanent workers was in focus of the deliberations. 

DECLARATION

Summarising the two-day long deliberations, the Core Group prepared the declaration of the meeting incorporating the concrete demands and programmes of action. Tapan Sen, secretary of CITU and MP, moved the draft declaration and the same was adopted unanimously by the meeting. 

The full text of the declaration is given below:

“The extended session of CPSTU noted with serious concern the so-called guidelines for seventh round of wage negotiations for the employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings issued by the Union Cabinet on October 16, 2006. 

While allowing the management to start negotiation with the unions on wage revision for the employees, the so-called guidelines issued by the cabinet contain number of conditionalities, which would seriously impede and hinder free and fair negotiations. The dictate on the ten-year tenure of the wage agreement is one such adverse condition, which is not acceptable to the trade unions at any cost. Such conditions have no basis at all as the same central government has already allowed five-year wage agreement in coal industry along with full neutralisation. 

Similarly, the conditions of linkage of wage rise with productivity have been crafted to encourage further downsizing, outsourcing and contractorisation. The guidelines on sick PSUs in this regard tantamount to virtual denial of wage-revision to the workers and employees of those sick units who have already faced severe deprivation during the last two rounds, despite the fact that those units have been pushed into sickness owing to discriminatory and anti-PSU policies of the government. 

The Mumbai session of CPSTU held on March 18-19, 2006 has formulated the challenging tasks for the forthcoming wage negotiations for PSU workers. They are, inter alia, 

• Tenure of the agreement not more than five years at any cost 

• Improving the logical relativity between the pay and benefits of the workers and the executives which had turned widely adverse during last round of wage negotiations

• Annual increment system as percentage of basic pay to be calculated cumulatively every year

• Wage rise for the contract workers in PSUs ensuring at least the minimum wage and benefits available to the permanent workers in respective PSUs 

• Merger of DA equal to 50 per cent of the existing basic pay with effect from April 1, 2004 

• Wage revision for the employees of sick PSUs and financial and policy support for their revival 

* Filling up of all vacancies in PSUs through fresh recruitment

The Mumbai Workshop of CPSTU also reiterated its resolve to carry on united movement against the ongoing move of privatisation, disinvestments and denigration of public sector units. 

The CPSTU also denounces the recent move of the government to reduce interest rate on Provident Fund and slash down the benefits under Employees Pension Scheme further. 

Pursuit of the above tasks warrants determined united struggle by the public sector workers to defeat the government guidelines as mentioned above. United struggle of all segments and sectors of the workers is the need of the hour if the sector-wise struggle is to survive and grow to its full strength. With this understanding, the major central trade unions of the country and all national independent employees federations of the state and central government employees, banks, insurance, defence, telecom and other services have jointly given a call to observe countrywide general strike on December 14, 2006 against the anti-people economic policy of the government with the focus against the conspiracy for privatisation and disinvestments in PSUs and attacks on trade union rights. 

The CPSTU calls upon the public sector workers all over the country to join this call for countrywide general strike of December 14 in full strength which will pave the way for decisively defeating the fetters being sought to be imposed by the government on the rights of the PSU workers through atrocious conditionalities on the forthcoming wage negotiations in PSUs. The CPSTU appeals to all the trade unions in public sector, irrespective of affiliations, to join the strike action and other agitational programmes. 

COURSE OF ACTION

The CPSTU decided the following course of action and activities

1. Serving of strike notice in all PSUs on November 29, 2006 through demonstrations

2. Nationwide strike in all PSUs on December 14, 2006

3. Demonstration in all PSUs and sending of telegrams to prime minister on December 7, 2006 demanding scrapping of the anti-worker guidelines and demanding commencement of wage negotiation without preconditions

4. All India Convention of Public Sector workers sometime during next budget session of parliament followed by a dharna before parliament on the following day wherefrom the next course of action will be announced.”

Responding to the call “to oppose the conditionalities tooth and nail in the negotiations process and simultaneously prepare for a countrywide united showdown with the government to make them understand that their anti-worker design will not pass” the Bangalore meeting of the CPSTU has blown the whistle to mark the beginning of a determined long-drawn united struggles of the workers of CPSUs throughout the country to defeat the anti-worker conditionalities imposed by the government. The government aims to slap unattractive service conditions and compensation package for the public sector workers as an enabling design prescribed by World Bank towards dismantling the public sector industries.