Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam   

VSP employees to strike work today

VISAKHAPATNAM: Security has been beefed up, as employees of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant will strike work from 6 a.m. on Wednesday to press for revision of wages.

Last-ditch efforts by the management to convince the unions to withdraw the one-day strike have failed, even as senior Labour Department officials and ACP (South) Mohammad Khan appealed to the unions not to prevent contract workers from going to work and not to cause any hindrance to essential services. The plant has 20,000 contract workers.

The unions have promised that the strike would be “purely voluntary” and they would not indulge in any forcible action. They, however, exuded confidence that the strike would be total.

The Visakha Steel Workers’ Union, the recognised union, has reiterated its demand for 78.2 per cent DA merger, minimum guaranteed benefit of 28 per cent and wage revision once in five years.

The INTUC and the BMS, which are not a signatory to the strike notice served on October 20, declared their full support to the strike.

VSWU president D. Adinarayana and general secretary N. Rama Rao, along with representatives of all other unions, held meetings at bus stops inside the plant and sought the wholehearted support of the workers to make the strike a grand success. They said the strike being organised for the first time for wage revision would be total and peaceful.

“We have to stand by what majority of workers want. Everyone is upset due to abnormal delay in wage revision,” Visakha Steel Employees’ Congress deputy general secretary N. Ramachandra Rao said.

Of 12,500 employees in the plant, 1,000 are trainees. The police and CISF personnel have intensified patrolling at all entry gates to the plant. The management, which appealed to the unions to wait till November 12 when wage negotiations would be held in Delhi, asked all 5,000-odd officers to report for ‘A’ shift commencing at 6 a.m. after cancelling all types of leave.

With the help of officers and contract workers, the management is making efforts to ensure power and water supply, work at thermal power plant, coke oven and other essential services.

RINL Chairman and Managing Director P.K. Bishnoi had earlier termed the strike as counter-productive at a time when expansion work was going on in full swing and the company was facing the challenge posed by recession.

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