The first meeting of the National Council after the VI Membership Verification in BSNL, is scheduled to be held on 23rd December 2013. This NC Meeting is being held under a new situation where two recognised unions are present, instead of one, which was the situation in all the earlier meetings. On the initiative of the lone recognised union, BSNLEU, this verification was conducted for grant of recognition to two unions, which get more than 15%. As such, BSNLEU and NFTE have been recognised as the First and Second Recognised unions. The number of members from BSNLEU will be 9, while for NFTE it will be 5, with a total of 14 members from the Staff Side. But, all the officials nominated by BSNLEU have not been accepted by the Management. While 5 are accepted, the other 4, nominated from unions other than BSNLEU (allies) have not been accepted. In the same way, only 10 items from the 17 items submitted by the staff side are included in the agenda. Another arbitrary decision of the management was that, instead of election by the staff side, the Leader and Secretary of Staff Side was allotted to NFTE and BSNLEU by BSNL Management.
In these circumstances, to make the NC Meeting successful and also to restore the NC as effective negotiating machinery, the following requirements are important and should be implemented:
1. The Chairman of the National Council should be the CMD BSNL and all full time Directors of BSNL should be the members of the Council to enable decisions to be taken on the spot. Both in the National Council of Central Government Employees and Departmental Council in DOT, Cabinet Secretary and Secretary DOT are/were Chairman respectively. All Departmental Secretaries are members of the National Council mentioned earlier and all the members of the Telecom Commission were members in the Departmental Council. The same system should be introduced in BSNL.
2. The members to the National Council, nominated by the recognised union/s should be accepted without considering the point whether he/she belongs to the particular recognised union or not. The recognised union/s represents all the workers and decisions taken in the Council are binding on all the employees. As such the unnecessary condition that only the members of the recognised union/s should be nominated should be dropped. From the inception of NC in BSNL in 2003, the recognised union was allowed to nominate members from other unions. This should be continued.
3. The condition and convention in the National Councils and Departmental Councils in government is that the Leader and Secretary of the Staff Side will be elected democratically by the Staff Side itself. The arbitrary condition that the Leader will be from NFTE and Secretary from BSNLEU is not acceptable. The earlier system should be restored so that the Staff Side will elect its Leader and Secretary through democratic process.
4. The Ratio between the First and Second Recognised Union should reflect in all the committees wherever staff Side is represented. Accordingly, the ratio should be 9:5 ie. 2:1
5. The items submitted by the Staff Side for discussion in the National Council should not be dropped by the Management arbitrarily. In case the Management feels that the number of items is very many, it can discuss with the Staff Side and find a way out.
6. The Official Side as well as the Staff Side is expected to be fully prepared for fruitful discussion and decision. The items are submitted one month earlier and hence there will be sufficient time for preparation. If a note by the Official Side is prepared and furnished to the Staff Side regarding the position of the Management on each item, the time for discussion can be reduced and decisions could be taken without lengthy discussion. This is the system adopted in many committee meetings, which will save time and energy.
7. Committee meetings should be held regularly ie. once in three months. The date of the next meeting can be decided in the National Council meeting itself, so that the convenience and availability of all can be ensured.
8. The Standing Committee meetings used to be held once in a month. Both the Management and Unions have now agreed that in can be held once in two months. These bi-monthly meetings should be held regularly and action taken report furnished.
9. The number of members of the Staff Side at present is 14. This is very less comparing to the large number of workers, categories, pan India presence and other connected matters. After thorough discussion earlier, the number was increased from 14 to 15 with the management open for further discussion. But unfortunately now it has been reduced to 14. This is to be increased to 20.
10. Once the meeting is over, there should not be much delay to issue the official minutes. At the maximum, the Minutes should be issued within 15 days. This will enable the Staff Side to submit the agenda for the next meeting at an early date which will suit the official side also.
11. And of course, it should be the objective of the meetings to settle maximum issues at the earliest for which both the Official Side and the Staff Side should co-operate.
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