NLC, trade unions meet fails

A tripartite meeting, involving the AITUC union and Neyveli Lignite Corporation management, today failed to settle the issue of regularisation of contract workers.
Talks held in the presence of Assistant Labour Commissioner S Sivarajan at Puducherry failed, R Rajan, NLC Deputy Manager said.
NLC asked few months time to settle the issue but the AITUC union was not willing and so the talks failed, he said.
Neyveli AITUC President K Venkatesan said the union's executive committee will meet at Neyveli tomorrow to discuss the next course of action.
Earlier, contract workers belonging to eight trade unions had served a notice on the management stating if their demand for regularisation as per the Supreme Court order was not conceded immediately they would go on an indefinite strike on or after February 25.

Sources in the AITUC, which has strength of about 12,000 contract workers, had said they would not participate in the proposed strike, as the NLC management was in the process of regularising the workers as per the Supreme Court orders.

The trade unions belonging to various political parties including CITU, DMK and AIADMK with a strength of about 1,200 workers requested the management to give their response in the next 15 days on the implementation of apex court order.
There are more than 13,000 contract workers in the NLC which is catering to the power needs of the southern states.

The Supreme Court had last year ordered absorbing the contract workers on the basis of seniority.