Three recognized federations including AIDEF, INDWF and BPMS have decided to vehemently oppose and fight back against the decision of the Modi government to corporatize the ordnance factories.
The defence civilian employees of the AIDEF, INDWF and BPMS took the decision during a meeting on Sunday.
In a joint circular, the federations stated that they would communicate their decision to the central government on June 23, 2021 and issue strike notice on July 1, 2021 and would go for an indefinite strike with effect from July 19, 2021.
The AIDEF, INDWF & BPMS have resolved to unitedly fight back against the decision of the government to break the ordnance factories in to 7 corporations.
The defence civilian employees’ federations have called upon the entire workforce of the ordnance factories to join hands in their fight to save the 220 years old ordnance factories and their employees.
The decisions were taken in the joint meeting of the AIDEF, INDWF & BPMS held on Sunday through video conference.
The meeting was attended by SN Pathak, president, AIDEF; C. Srikumar, general secretary, AIDEF; Ashok Singh, president, INDWF; R. Srinivasan, general secretary, INDWF; Sadhu Singh, vice-president, BPMS and Mukesh Singh, general secretary, BPMS among others.
The meeting took a very serious note of the manner in which the Centre has dismantled the ordnance factories and “sabotaged” the future of the committed workforce of the 41 ordnance factories.
“All the previous written assurances and commitment given to the federations that ordnance factories would not be corporatised has been violated,” the meeting observed.
The meeting also observed that the assurance given in the conciliation settlement by the JS(LS) representing the DDP that a meeting would be arranged with the EGoM to enable the federations to place their disputes with regard to corporatisation has been violated as no such meeting has been arranged with the federations.
The federations said while the conciliation settlement reached on October 9, 2020, the employer DDP has made a “series of violation of the settlement and also Sec.33(1) (A) of the ID Act 1947”.
The federations said for several times, they have pointed out the violations to the DDP and to the CLC(C) but there was no fruitful outcome.
The joint complaint, lodged by the federations on March 31, 2021, was also not acted upon by the CLC(C), which has established his “biasness and partisan attitude” towards the employees, the federations claimed.
In the absence of the three major federations, the CLC(C) in a hurried and hasty manner concluded the conciliation proceedings and a failure report was recorded on June 15, 2021, which enabled the Cabinet to take its “arbitrary decision”, the meeting observed.
“The viable, alternative and robust proposals given by the federations as desired by the Secretary(DP) to continue the ordnance factories as government organisations has been thrown to the dustbin and no cognisance has been given to the proposals submitted by the federations,” the federations said.
This has “exposed the biasness of the government towards ordnance factories”, they said.
To save the ordnance factories from liquidation and protect the interest of the employees with regard to all their service matters as central government employees, the federations unanimously decided to explore the possibility of legal actions in consultation with senior lawyers.
The federations decided to serve the strike notice for an indefinite strike on July 1, 2021 and to commence the indefinite strike from July 19, 2021.
“The decision of the commencement of the indefinite strike will be informed to the government on June 23, 2021. In the meantime the federations will have the meeting of their respective executive committee and inform the joint decision to them through video conference within this 3 days,” the federations said.
The federations of the ordnance factories’ employees have requested all the affiliated unions and the factory level JAC to approach the affiliates of CDRA, JWM Association and request them to support and join the indefinite strike.