Advertisement
Home PoliticsAndhra News

Corona Effect: Steel Plant Staff Defer Strike

Corona Effect: Steel Plant Staff Defer Strike

Even as the entire country has been facing a major crisis due to second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Narendra Modi government has been silently going ahead with the move to privatise the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited in Visakhapatnam, better known as Viskhapatnam Steel Plant.

What is worse, the central government has even refused to implement the wage agreement signed with them to increase their salaries, despite the steel plant making good profit this year in spite of pandemic.

The trade unions, who have been continuing to resist all such attempts to privatise the plant, gave a strike notice last week to the steel plant management stating that they would go on a strike on May 6 to press for their demands.

However, on Wednesday, they changed their mind and announced that they would be postponing their strike because of the bad Covid-19 situation in Visakhapatnam.

They wrote a letter to the management stating that they would reserve their right to go on strike any day later to pursue their demands.

CITU president J Ayodhya Ram asked the management to remove the hurdles in the implementation of the wage agreement for steel workers.

He said the workers should be given 17% minimum guarantee benefit as in the last wage agreement. 

“The pandemic situation has resulted in the cost of essential commodities going up steeply. Hence, the management should consider wage revision which was done last time four years ago,” he said.

RELATED ARTICLES

Tags: coronavirus