The Party Congress at Calicut being held now has given an opportunity to meet with many leaders, especially in the  trade union field. The issue of unorganised  workers is one issue which is taken very seriously by the CITU. In BSNL we have formed the BSNL Casual and Contract Workers federation nd we have sought the help of CITU also in settling the issues, since they have been working on the issue of unorganised workers for a long period.

I met Coms. Janardhan Pati (Odisha), Dr. D.L.Karad (Maharashtra) Prasanna Kumar, Mohanty (Karnataka), Kahmiri Singh (H.P) and leaders in other states and discussed the ways and means to ensure minimum wage, social security measures etc as also regularisation of the casual labours. I had requested Com. Tapan Sen M.P., General Secretary CITUto arrange a meeting with the Labour Minister. I discussed with Com. P.R.Natarajan, M.P. who took up the matter in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour.  All of them assured support and assured to take up the matter with the Government.

A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and K.S. Radhakrishnan said Mr. Raja’s apprehension that his case in the trial court would be prejudiced due to the verdict cancelling the 2G licences is “not well founded“.

The companies whose review petitions were dismissed are Videocon Telecommunications, S Tel, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Tata Teleservices, Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu), Etisalat DB Telecom and Idea Cellular.

“We have carefully perused the review petition and the record of the case and are convinced that the judgment of which review has been sought does not suffer from any error apparent warranting its reconsideration,” the bench said while giving separate orders on the review petitions filed by the seven telecom companies.

While rejecting the Centre’s plea on the issue of sanction in which the Prime Minister’s Office was pulled up, the bench said its verdict did not suffer from any error and under the garb of review petition rehearing and reconsideration of the issue decided cannot be allowed.

“We have carefully perused the averments contained in the review petition and the grounds on which the petitioner (Centre) has sought review of the judgement and are convinced that the judgement of which review has been sought does not suffer from any error apparent warranting its reconsideration.

“In the garb of review, the petitioner cannot seek re-hearing of the matter and reconsideration of the issues decided by the Court. The review petition is accordingly dismissed,” the bench said.(Courtesy : Hindu}

It has been reported by comrades from Bangalore that the agitation of casual and contract workers going on in Bengaluru has been successful and most of the demands are achieved. I am waiting for the detailed report.

Congratulation to the workers for their success!

Gross  injustice is cruelly meted out to the thousands of casual labour by the BSNL management. They were engaged by the DOT, mainly in the 1980s and 1990s and they have been working continuously for the last twenty to 13 years. At the time of corporatisation it was assured by the DOT that all the left out casual labours, who are eligible as per the existing rules will be regularised and vacancies were kept for them. More than six thousand casual labours were regularised accordingly on or after 01-10-2000. But due to the administrative lethargy of certain field/circle management, many cases for regularisation were not furnished to the BSNL Corporate Office quickly. But most of these cases were furnished to the C.O. by 2003-2004.

Instead of regularising them as per assurance, the BSNL Corporate delayed them month after month in the name of scrutinising the records etc. And now it is denying regularisation on the plea of a Supreme Court Judgement. But DOP&T has clearly given permission to regularise the casual labour on the basis of the same Supreme Court judgement and many Departments like Income Tax, Customs, Central Excise have already regularised their casual labours.

But despite BSNLEU, the lone recognised union in BSNL,  has been continuously taking up the case in all forums including the National Council, the management has not taken any action to regularise them so far. Even the Labour Ministry has recently issued a statement regarding the rules for regularisation of TSMs and Casual Labour.

If there is any sincerity left on the part of the management they can not keep away from the regularisation of these workers engaged in the DOT/BSNL for many years. Any delay in forwarding their cases to the corporate office was not by their mistake, but by the field level management. The mistake has to be corrected and they should be regularised. The assurance given to the Unions for their regularisation should be kept. There is not much financial commitment since they are already getting the wage of a Group D in the Central Government.

Today, once again, the issue was discussed by me with Shri A.N.Rai, Director (HR) and Shri R.N.Goyal, GM (Estt.) and demanded that immediate action be taken to regularise them. Both of them agreed that some way has got to be found. I have told that these casual labour can be regularised in the same way, how others were regularised in the Income Tax etc. and how they were regularised in BSNL itself earlier. We want that justice be meted out to these workers who toiled their entire youth for the development, expansion and maintenance of the DOT/BSNL services. History will not forgive the BSNL management if justice is not meted to these workers.

Yesterday, 26th March, I could meet top leaders of the CITU and discuss about the issue of contract-casual workers in BSNL. The present situation was explained to Coms. A.K.Padmanabhan, President and Tapan Sen, General Secretary, CITU and sought their guidance. They said they will intimate their units to give all help and support in the struggles of the BSNL casual-contract workers for getting their grievance settled. Our local level comrades may meet the local leaders of CITU if any help is needed.Com. Tapan Sen, he is also a Member of Parliament assured to take up these issues in the Parliament. He also assured to get a meeting with the Labour Minister within a few days.

My thanks to these CITU leaders for coming to the help of the BSNL casual and contract workers.

During the CEC meeting of the BSNLEU at New Delhi on 22-23 March 2012, the souvenir published in connection with the All India Conference of the BSNL Casual and Contract Workers Federation held at Lucknow on 24-25 September 2011 was given to all the participants. I have gone through the Souvenir. It includes a number of educative articles by Coms. M.K.Pandhe, Tapan Sen, V.S.Achuthanandan, Swadesh Dev Roy, Kali Ghosh, R.S.Yadav, V.A.N.Namboodiri and others mainly dealing with the issue of the casual and contract workers, the need to end the exploitation, the rights of the workers and the urgency of making a change to the better. There are articles both in Hindi  and in English.

My congratulations to Coms. K.R.Yadav, R.K.Mishra and other leaders who organised the AIC in a spectacular way and published this souvenir. The souvenir be read by  our workers and leaders.

Agitations in many SSAs are going in Karnataka Circle by the Casual and Contract workers for getting the government/BSNL orders on wages, social security  measures like EPF, ESI etc implemented. The struggles are going on in Bangalore, Raichur and Bellary as per the reports. Leaders of BSNLEU, including Circle Secretary Com. C.K.Gundanna are making all efforts for a positive settlement.

During my stay at Bangalore, I met Mr. Ghosh, PGM Bangalore along with District Secretary, BSNLEU, Com. Sudarshan and DS BSNLCCWF, Com. Cheluvaraju and discussed the burning issues of Casual and Contract workers. He assured that all rules like minimum wage etc. will be fully implemented.

I also met Com. Prasannakumar, Secretary, CITU Karnataka along with Com.Gundanna and discussed about strengthening of the Casual & Contract Workers Federation in Karnataka. The Circle Conference is proposed to be held by the first week of May, preferably at Belgaum.

The meeting of the Standing Committee of National Council was held today. A large number of issues were discussed, a brief note of which may be posted in the BSNLEU website. But two most important issues of the Casual and Contract workers were also raised in the Committee.

1. IDA wages for the casual labour, instead of CDA wages – The Union strongly reiterated its demand that the casual labour working in BSNL should be given daily wage of 1/30th of the minimum scale of the lowest pay scale (in the case of unskilled workers). The management is now paying 1/30th of the group D in the government. This should be changed to IDA wages. The management side agreed to examine the issue positively.

2. Implementation of minimum wage and social security measures to the contract workers – The management assured that the orders on the above issues will be implemented. Circle heads have already been instructed to implement them.

I met the GM (Admn), Shri Neeraj Verma, who also assured that strict instructions have been issued to all circles to implement the minimum wage, social security measures etc. However, unless the workers and the unions continuously pressurise, the situation will not improve.

A meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour was held on the petition submitted by Com.V.A.N.Namboodiri through Com. P.R.Natarajan, M.P. last year and  Com. Namboodiri  gave evidence before the committee. BSNL management gave false evidences and tried to avoid the questions raised by the Committee. However, they were compelled to give written replies to the Committee. BSNLEU/BSNLCCWF exposed these statements and the wrong information given by BSNL. Coms. Tapas Ghosh, Animesh Mitra and other comrades gave evidence before the Committee when it met at Kolkatta.

Now the Parliamentary Standing Committee has agains asked the CMD BSNL  to reply to the fresh queries. Corporate office has forwarded the same to the CGMs for immediate report. Copies of both are posted in the BSNLEU website . Circle/District Secretaries of both BSNLEU and BSNLCCWF are requested to find out what are the reports being sent to C.O. and if found false, intimate me /GS BSNLEU /GS BSNLCCWF immediately.