The Karnataka State Transport Corporation employees have decided to launch a State-wide agitation in protest against the meagre 8% pay hike and unilateral decision to that effect by the State government.
An emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Akhila Karnataka Rajya Raste Saarige Naukarara Mahamandala has been convened at Bengaluru on July 3 to take a decision on the form and schedule of the proposed strike. The strike would be to pressure the government to evolve a negotiated decision on wage hike.
President of the Mahamandala (Federation) K.S. Sharma, in a release issued here on Thursday, condemned the 8% increase in salary of the State Road Transport employees, describing it as “most inadequate” and “unsatisfactory”. Despite repeated demands of the Federation that the issue of pay hike should be decided through bilateral negotiations only, the government “took an unilateral decision which turned out to be an anti-employee and anti-trade union measure.”
Mr. Sharma pointed out that the Central Government declared a wage increase of 23.55% for its employees and also increased the minimum salary from Rs.7,000 to Rs.18,000.
The Telangana government had given a pay hike of 43% to its State Road Transport employees in 2013. But, the Karnataka government had done ‘injustice’ to more than 1.25 lakh transport employees.
He said the Federation had submitted a 53-point charter of demands to the government on December 3 last, which included a negotiated settlement under the I.D. Act, 1947 with the Federation and that the pay hike should be made effective from January this year. The Federation had followed up the charter of demands with two notices on April 22 and June 11 reiterating its demand against the unilateral decision on wage revision, with a warning of launching a strike. Yet, the government or the managements of transport corporations failed to respond to the demands of the employees who have been suffering hardships, victimisation and harassment every day.
There are illegal wage-cuts every month for drivers, conductors and mechanics, who sometimes lose to the extent of 10 per cent of their wage by way of fines. The drivers are made to work for 12 hours and sometimes longer hours on long routes but wages were paid only for 8 to 9 hours, denying them overtime wage. False cases are booked against conductors and they are punished arbitrarily, he alleged.
While women employees suffered harassment at the workplace, suspension of employees had become a rule rather than an exception. There were no inter-corporation transfers and employees were forced to work under inhuman conditions, he said.
