Members of a private medical college and research institute workers' association, affiliated to Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), submitted a memorandum to the District Collector recently, seeking his intervention in bringing the management of the institute to the negotiating table, to discuss the demands of the workers.
According to the District CITU president, E. Muthukumar, who is also the president of the Meenakshi MCRI workers union, Kancheepuram, the workers' salary was far below the average salary provided to their counterparts in the industry. Further, other emoluments such as DA, bonus and overtime allowance were not provided.
Many workers, who had completed the minimum number of stipulated days for becoming permanent staff as per the Labour Act, were still working without confirmation. Printed salary slips indicating their EPF account number and other details were not issued, Mr. Muthukumar said.
When these issues were raised before the Assistant Commissioner (Labour), in January, the management gave a written assurance that these issues would be solved soon. But it had failed to implement its assurance, and had also stayed away from the tri-partite talks called for by the Labour Department. Hence, Mr. Muthukumar said, the Labour Department, on April 26, declared that talks between the workers' union and the management had failed.
Following this, workers attached to the union embarked upon a sit-in dharna on the institute's premises urging the management to come to negotiating table to hammer out a solution to this impasse, he added.
