IT was a historic day for the trade union movement of the country on many counts, when nearly sixty lakh scheme workers almost 90 per cent of whom are women, went on strike on January 17, 2018. This is for the first time that the joint platform of central trade unions has given a call for strike for a particular sector of workers.More than one crore workers are working under various government schemes which render basic services like nutrition, health, education and care to the working people of the country.

THE public transport workers numbering about 1,50,000 working in Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporations (TNSTC) across the state are on war path since January 4 in protest against the adamant attitude of the state government in meeting their genuine demands, which are as follows:1)    To make the pay and allowance equal to the drivers of the state government and other local bodies in the state.

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions, in a statement issued on January 10, has denounced the government’s move in registering FIR against the journalist of Tribune, Rachna Khaira and her sources for exposing the leakage-prone systemic fault in Aadhar administration.

“The bouncers pushed me back into my chair and held me by my shoulders till I signed the document. It was an awful experience and I can't begin to tell you how demeaning it was. It was not like I was on the bench. I was performing and they treated me in this terrible manner”, states an employee of VDSI who signed on the dotted line.VDSI (Verizon Data Services India) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based Verizon Communications Inc having its operations in India for so many years, employing thousands of young engineers.

THE Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), in its office bearers meeting held on December 17, 2017 at Chennai decided to launch a series of struggle programmes to defeat the draconian anti-people FRDI bill and to protect the interests of the depositors.BEFI has called upon all its state units to collect crores of signatures from the public as part of the campaign launched by the United Forum of Bank Unions to be submitted to the speaker of the Lok Sabha in the budget session of the parliament.BEFI will conduct street campaigns, demonstrations culminating in a day long dharna in all the