NJCS meeting fails in reaching consensus; TUs to launch protests today

Central Chronicle News
Bhilai, Jun 27: The 290th meeting of National Joint Committee for Steel (NJCS) failed in reaching any consensus on the sixth day too. Finally the meeting ended with a decision to conduct physical meeting in the first week of July 2021. The trade unions have geared up to hold three-day protest from June 28 at all units of SAIL. On June 30, they are going to hold strike at all the units and captive mines of SAIL.
The discussion on perks continued on Sunday also. Negative and arrogant approach of the management was visible throughout the meeting as the management stuck to the previous offer and made it clear that they cannot increase the offer. It needs to be mentioned here that after making various presentations and slide-show on Saturday, management had finally made two proposals – (1) 15% of revised Basic (2) Graded perks ie 25% in S1 to 16% in S11 grade on the minimum basic of grade.
Workers group remained firm in voicing their unanimous demands of 35% variable perks on revised basic pay and rejected the offer of the management outright. In the meeting CITU again raised the demand of forthright withdrawal of negative preconditions like gratuity curtailment, no full arrears from 1-1-2017 and 10 years’ periodicity without which agreement cannot be finalized.
Demand for simultaneous wage increase for contract workers has also been voiced. CITU also highlighted the circumstances under which the demand of variable perks has been raised. CITU emphasized that fact that variable perks is a vital element of NJCS agreement as it maintains the changing dynamics within the periodicity of the agreement. As usual management did not respond.
On Sunday, the management made an attempt to explain the rationale of graded perks through representation and urged the trade unions to accept the format. All unions, except INTUC, rejected this offer and clearly stated that they will not accept anything less than 35% perks on basic pay.
INTUC National President G Sanjeeva Reddy stated that they want to attend physical meeting and understand the offers made by the management. They too demanded that all the workers should be given the same perks. However, other unions remained firm on the decision of strike.
All unions believe that discrimination between officers and employees is not acceptable. Most of the unions said that the reason for the anger among the workers is the discrimination between the officers and the employees.
The difference between the two is natural, but the criteria should be the same for determination of salary. All the trade unions except INTUC declared to go on strike on June 30. CITU leader Tapan Sen said that it is not possible to consider the format given by the management as there is a huge gap between the demand of personnel and the management’s offer.
G Sanjeeva Reddy, SK Baghel, Vansh Bahadur Singh, BN Choubey, Harjit Singh, DS Panikkar and Chandrasekhar Paude from INTUC; Tapan Sen, Lalit Mohan Mishra from CITU, Ramendra Kumar and Vinod Soni from AITUC; Sanjay Wadhavkar, Rajendra Singh from HMS and DK Pandey, Himanshu Bal from BMS attended the NJCS meeting.