The vexatious labour issue of the Neyveli Lignite Corporation has been eluding solution, probably because of the parallel conciliatory talks being held with two trade unions fighting for the same cause.
The Joint Action Council (JAC) of 10 contract workers’ trade unions and the NLC Jeeva Oppantha Thozhilar Sangam, affiliated to the All India Trade Union Congress, had served separate strike notice, at different points of time, on the NLC management, listing almost identical demands, such as regularisation of service and wage hike.
Separate talks
This forced the Central Labour Department to call the two unions separately for talks at the same venue on subsequent dates, though it knew that it would be repetitive and time-consuming.
For instance, Assistant Labour Commissioner P. Sivarajan brokered the talks at Puducherry on September 16 and 17 with the two bodies, and they ended in stalemate. Similarly, two more rounds of talks have been scheduled for September 22 and 23 in Chennai and Puducherry.
While one union is busy holding talks, the other is out on the street. Therefore, uncertainty prevails among NLC officials and union leaders about what would be the outcome of the future talks and when the issue would be resolved.
Real strength
NLC sources told The Hindu that the company negotiators remained perplexed over two factors: which is the union that enjoys the majority support of the contract workers and the relative strength of the competing bodies.
On earlier occasions, the Jeeva Oppantha Thozhilalar Sangam happened to be the sole arbiter of the contract workers’ issue, and the management entered into agreements with it in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
But, as of now, the JAC, which includes the Labour Progressive Front (of the DMK) and the Anna Workers and Staff Union (of the AIADMK), has sought to play a leading role. As such, it looks as if both bodies are flexing their muscles in a show of one-upmanship. The claim that there are 13,000 contract workmen in the NLC is contestable; one projection put the number below 10,000.
Dilatory tactics Though the demands of the contract workers are genuine, there is a difference between the unions over how to address them. The Jeeva Oppantha Thozhilalar Sangam is keen that thousands of contract workers be made regular employees, but the JAC says the services of a batch of 750 workers be regularised. This has given the NLC management leverage to firm up its stand that it would look into their reasonable demands only after the strike is called off. The unions are baffled over how to work out an exit strategy.
Call for secret ballot
The NLC sources and AITUC district secretary M. Sekar say a secret ballot ought to be conducted to ascertain the strength of the unions so the majority union could be called for talks.
In the absence of such a foolproof measure, the field is now open to the unions to rake up the issue endlessly, at the cost of the contract workers, the organisation, and the power sector as a whole.
