BSNL employees union urges CMD to hold regular interactions for revival

BSNL Employees Union has urged the company's chairman and managing director to hold regular interactions with the unions, like his predecessor did, for early revival of the loss-making public sector firm.

BSNL CMD PK Purwar, however, said he keeps meeting unions, employees and even individual employee for their suggestions and advice.

In a letter to Purwar, seen by PTI, the union said in mid-2016, BSNL management, under the then CMD Anupam Shrivastava showed inclination to involve unions and associations in the management's initiatives "night free calling" and "all India free roaming" where employees went beyond their duty hours to popularise the schemes resulting in increase in company's subscriber base.

BSNL is the only company, apart from Jio, that has regularly gained mobile customers. The subscriber market share of BSNL increased to 10.35 per cent in March 2020 from 9.44 per cent in March 2018. The company now has over 11.8 crore mobile customers.

BSNL Employees Union (BSNL EU) General Secretary P Abhimanyu in a letter dated January 7 said unions and associations utilised inputs from the management around various initiatives for motivating the employees to give better performance.

"When AUAB (Unions and Associations of BSNL) decided to organise the "Service with A smile" movement, the then CMD BSNL, Anupam Shrivastava ji, was kind enough to get that movement kickstarted through a huge meeting held in the corporate office premises.

"However, we regret to say that the coordination between the management on one side and the unions and associations on the other side, has become a story of the past," BSNL EU said.

When contacted, Purwar said "I always meet both unions and associations as well as individual employees to seek their valuable suggestions , support and advice."

BSNL EU on the other hand said it has insisted BSNL CMD on many occasions and alleged that he has been reluctant to have regular interactions with unions and associations as was done in the past.

"Even during this COVID-19 pandemic situation, interactions could have very well been organised with the unions and associations, through video conferencing. Unfortunately, that has not happened. Perhaps, you are under the impression that the unions and associations are there only to raise demands of the employees," the letter said.

It added that the management's mindset of viewing the unions and associations "as a headache" should be shed.

"We urge upon you to restart the practice of having regular interactions with the unions and associations for the sake of involving employees for the early revival of the company," BSNL EU said.

BSNL recorded a loss of Rs 15,500 crore and debt of Rs 21,902 crore in August 2020.