HUNDREDS of BSNL employees staged a demonstration in front of Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, the corporate office of the state-owned telecom firm in New Delhi, on August 21 expressing their strong protest against the report of Deloitte Consultants recommending retrenchment of 70,000 employees through VRS, recruitment of executives on contract basis, and reducing the number of Secondary Switching Areas (SSAs) from 334 to 167 among others.

The private consultancy firm was appointed by BSNL last year to recommend suggestions for revival of the company. But the suggestions made by the consultants are mainly against the interests of the company and its workers. The recommendations, if implemented, will result in deterioration of the service to the people. Though the recommendations have been submitted many weeks ago, the BSNL management did not discuss the same with the unions/associations despite repeated requests. The consultants too did not have any discussion with the unions, which are important stake holders of the company.

The gathering was addressed by V A N Namboodiri, Convener of the Forum of BSNL Unions/Associations, and other union leaders. They asked the management to discuss the issues with the unions and reject the recommendations that are against the interests of BSNL and its workers.

BSNL Casual and Contract Workers Demand Minimum Wages

BSNL Casual and Contract Workers’ Federation held dharnas at BSNL District Offices across the country on August 26, demanding payment of minimum wages, implementation of social security measures like Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees’ State Insurance (ESI), regularisation of jobs, and implementation of labour laws among others.

At present, there are about one lakh casual and contract workers engaged in BSNL. Most of them have completed 15-20 years of service. Though the Department of Telecom (DoT) in 2000 issued orders for regularisation of all the left-out casual labourers, due to administrative delay, about 3,000 have still not been regularised. The contract workers should also be regularised considering their long years of service for DoT and BSNL.

The contract workers in BSNL are the victims of bitter exploitation. They are neither paid minimum wages fixed by the government, nor included under schemes like EPF and ESI. Despite continuous representations to the management, the workers are paid a meager sum of Rs 2,500-Rs 3,500 or even less in some cases per month, while they are eligible for monthly allowance of Rs 6,600 to more than Rs 10,000, based on their skill and the station they are working at.

The Federation requested the BSNL management and the government to ensure that the country’s labour laws are implemented for the casual and contract workers too.