Telangana Pradesh Beedi Workers’ Federation consisting of 21 unions has expressed serious concern over the state of affairs of the beedi industry and the seven lakh beedi workers depending on it.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, the federation president A.S. Posetty, said that managements of beedi companies closed down the industry protesting against the printing of skull and cross bones symbol on labels of beedi bundles, for the past 26 days.
“In fact, for the first ten days managements shut the industry down with the concurrence of trade unions as a token of protest in the last month.
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Taking it as an advantage, managements stopped operations continuously till date to create scare as part of their plots to avoid revision of wage agreement this month,” he said.
Raising concern about the likelihood of suicides by beedi workers if the companies, numbering about 30 were not opened immediately, he said the workers would have resorted to that extreme step but for the Rs.1,000 Aasara pensions being given by the State Government to each beedi worker. Mr. Posetty who is also a senior TRS leader and party Polit Buro member appealing to the State Government to initiate steps to reopen companies, he alleged that certain beedi unions while being hand in glove with managements were acting against the interests of the workers. “We all are against the printing of skull and cross bones in 85 per cent space of labels. But, we oppose the continuous closure of the industry,” he said.