Shooting for close to 40 films was halted on Tuesday after the Film Employees Federation of South India began strike. With most of 24 film unions participating in the strike, work on movies such as actor Rajinikanth’s Kaala and actor Vijay’s Mersal had to be stopped.
“The FEFSI is not responsible for this strike,” reiterated FEFSI president R.K. Selvamani, adding, “The Tamil Film Producers Council said that they won’t work with the FEFSI, which is why we had to resort to a strike. We didn’t call for the strike. They refused to work with us. We are hoping they will call us for talks.”
He said that the FEFSI was open to rectifying mistakes and rejected the idea that the TFPC should be allowed to work with workers outside of the union.
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“The main issue here is that they had backtracked on the agreement that we struck with the previous regime. The new office-bearers have rejected that agreement on the grounds that Kalaipuli S. Thanu, former president of TFPC, agreed to an unfair price hike. How can we accept this?” he said.
With the TFPC threatening to recruit workers from outside the State, Mr. Selvamani said that workers from other unions would not be able to work here.
“When there is a problem between unions and the producers in a particular State, members of film unions from other States cannot work here.”
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Mr. Selvamani said that actor Kamal Haasan had advised the FEFSI to be fair since the Tamil film industry has not been doing well. “The announcement made by the TFPC that they won’t work with the FEFSI must be reversed. The wages that were agreed upon should not be reduced. The so-called ‘general conditions’ should be properly discussed. If they agree to the first demand, we can sit and talk about the other two, ” he said.