Railway unions threaten indefinite stir srom July 11

Railway unions under the aegis of National Joint Council of Action (NJCA) called for a nationwide indefinite strike from July 11 from 6 am in support of demands, mainly the review of the New Pension Scheme (NPS) and Seventh Pay Commission recommendations. About 4,000 railway employees from different divisions of South Central Railway (SCR) marched from South Central Railway Mazdoor Union (SCRMU), met SCR General Manager Ravindra Gupta and issued a strike notice.

Leaders said that in spite of the empowered committee set up by the government, the unions were not invited for debate and negotiations. The nationwide indefinite strike comes after the unions deferred their strike from April. General Secretary, National Federation of Indian Railway men (NFIR) M Raghavaiah said that the government was casual on the charter of demands submitted in December 2015.

Employees of railways, defence, postal, income tax, central customs and excise whose number which is over 32 lakh took a unanimous decision to go on an indefinite strike from July



11. General Secretary, SCRMU Ch Sankara Rao said, “The government is silent on the charter of demands. As many as six months have gone by but there seems to be no response. Strike notices have been issued to general managers in all zones and production units.”

The demands include improvement in minimum wage of Rs 26,000 and correspondingly improving multiplier factor for pay fixation, scrapping New Pension Scheme and restoring old pension scheme to be made applicable to those employees on and after 1.1.2004, scraping report of Bibek Debroy Committee and implementing positive recommendations of High Power Committee, recalling FDI notification of Government of India dating August 22, 2014 in construction, operation and maintenance of Indian Railways and scraping all agreements entered into with foreign companies as well as national companies which are detrimental to the interests of railways, ensuring parity in pay structure and promotional scope for common categories with those working in the central secretariat, retaining existing allowances and advances, ensuring payment of PL Bonus at the rate of Rs 7,000 per month for year 2014-15 as was done in October 2008.