Tamil Nadu State transport Employees commenced their indefinite strike today (Monday, 29th December) throughout the state demanding the immediate implementation of 12th Wage contract 95% of the buses in the state did not run.
Since the strike began 1 day earlier than the announced date, the public were subjected to unexpected hardship.
There are around 1,42,000 employees in 8 Tamil Nadu Transport Corporationss including Chennai, Villupuram, and Coimbatore.
The 11th Wage agreement expired on 30th August, 2013. The 12th wage contract should have been effective from 1st September, 2013. However, the employees are greatly upset that there has been delay from the government where not even discussions have taken place.
11 Employees Unions decided together to go on indefinite strike.
Following there was a 2-stage discussion between the unions & Deputy Collector Yasmin Begum at the office of the Employees’ Welfare Board. However, this ended in a failure.
Subsequently, the unions announced that the strike would commence as announced. However, they took a decision to start the strike one day earlier, throwing the public a sudden unpleasant surprise and putting them into great hardship.
The drivers who took the buses in the morning went on to stop & park them wherever they were to participate in the strike.
There are 300 MTC buses in Tambram Depot. Only 2 buses were taken out. Even they stopped at different locations.
Similarly, all the 67 buses in Villupuram depot were not taken out.
Out of the 102 buses in Chromepet Depot, only 16 buses were taken out.
All 217 buses were kept in the Depot at Anna Nagar West.
Pr4otests & demonstrations were conducted in front of 27 depots.
CITU Union leader informed that over 85% of the total employees of 30000 in Chennai are participating in the strike. With the 2-stage discussions ending in failure, the unions were compelled to start the strike a day in advance.
In other districts outside Chennai, 80% services are not functioning.
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