7th Pay Commission – BSNL Employees on 2 day Strike, Stage Dharna

7th Pay Commission – BSNL Employees on 2 day Strike, Stage Dharna

The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) employees went on two day strike from yesterday and staged a dharna in front of BSNL office at Rail Head Complex near Jammu in support of their demand.

The call for the strike has been given by All Unions and Associations of BSNL and the employees with banners in their hands were raising slogans in support of their demands which included grant of benefits of 7th Pay Commission to them.

The strike and dharna will continue tomorrow also a spokesman of the BSNL Unions and Associations said. He said the future course of action will be decided tomorrow.

The spokesman said that work was paralyzed in all offices of BSNL due to today’s strike. He accused Government of adopting delaying tactics in implementation of 7th Pay Commission recommendations in BSNL and warned that the struggle will be intensified in case of further delay.

A handout issued by Unions and Associations of BSNL said later that as per the recommendations of 3rd Pay Committee, which were already approved by the Union Cabinet , the employees of BSNL are not eligible for pay revision w.e.f January 1, 2017. The recommendations say that the employees of a PSU are not eligible for pay revision if the company had not earned the profit during the three preceding years.

However, the Unions and Associations while countering it stated that BSNL has gone into loss since 2009-10 onwards due to anti BSNL and pro-private policies of the Government and the employees are no way responsible for it.

The handout further said that it is the same BSNL which earned a profit of Rs 10,000 crore in 2004 – 05. However during the period from 2006 to 2012 the Government scuttled BSNL’s efforts to procure equipments for its mobile network expansions with the view to favour private telecom companies which is basic reason that BSNL became a loss making PSU, it added.

The handout said the employees on the other hand have taken many initiatives to pull the BSNL out of loss. Movements like “Customer Delight Year’’, “ Service with a Smile’’ (SWAS) etc were launched by the Unions and the Associations to actively involve the employees for improving BSNL’s quality of services. Further, as per the call of the Unions and Associations, the employees are also massively getting themselves involved in marketing activities, apart from doing their normal duties, to increase the customer base and the revenue of the company.

It said that it was with the efforts of BSNL Unions and Associations that it earned an operational profit of Rs 672 crore in 2014-15 which increased to Rs 3,854 crore in 2015-16 and in 2016-17 BSNL is also in operational profit.

The handout said that under these circumstances, denying pay revision to the BSNL employees on the plea that the company is not making profit is most unfair. It will demoralize the employees which in turn will affect the process of BSNL’s financial revival.

Source: DE