Coal India divestment: Workers plan strike on March 29

As Piyush Goyal, union coal and energy minister, remains firm on the decision to offload an additional 10% stake in Coal India, bringing down the government's share in the state-owned miner from the existing 79.65%, he is challenged with another outcry poised to break out March-end this year.

Four major trade unions affiliated with the Congress-backed INTUC and the Leftist CITU, AITUC and HMS together — representing about 80 % of the miner's workforce — have consented to a series of action plan to protest the disinvestment move as well as force the government to address key issues related to contractual workers.

Interestingly, the BJP-backed BMS is still not in league with these trade unions over the action plan of protest.

Last year, trade unions had jointly opposed the disinvestment move which brought Coal India Rs 22,557 crore by diluting 10% of its stake on January 31, 2015. However, while other issues related to labour and industrial relations escalated and all these five trade unions joined hands to call a strike on September 2 (under the purview of the general industrial strike), the BMS did not participate.

“We called off our support during the September strike as assurances were given by the government on our demands”, P K Dutta, general secretary of the BMS supported Akhil Bharatiya Khadan Majdoor Sangh told Business Standard.

This time too, BMS has not made it stance clear.

While INTUC, CITU, AITUC and HMS have consented to the proposed strike in March this year and an action plan has been formulated during a recently-concluded meeting in Nagpur, BMS was represented by “junior leaders” whose attitude has been stated to be “not very positive”.

“We’ll decide over the action plan after we meet the other trade unions”, Dutta said.

Both the Congress and Leftist trade unions, however, are decided on the strike-call whether BMS supports it or not.

Union leaders belonging to the Opposition's colours are of the view that non-participation of BMS will not dampen the worker's spirit.

“We have seen what happened in the September 2 strike last year. It was entirely successful despite the BMS not joining it”, D D Ramanandan, president of CITU-backed All India Coal Workers' Federation told this newspaper.

That day-long strike alone, which saw 80% participation from Coal India’s workers, had affected 85% of Coal India's mines.

As it lost nearly six million tonnes of output on that day, Coal India officials said during the January strike which went for two days, it had lost one and a half day's production.

The trade unions have now mooted for a joint-demonstration on February 19 in Coal India, its subsidiaries and in Singareni Collieries Company, followed by a “Work to Rule” principle during March 7-10, followed by a strike on March 29.

“A formal notice about the strike will be submitted to Coal India once we have a clearer picture after meeting BMS' senior leaders”, S Q Zama, secretary general of INTUC-led National Mine Workers' Federation told this business-daily.

The strike, if it finally materialises, will be the third such incident from coal workers in a single fiscal year after the Narendra Modi-led NDA government came to power.