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Five trade unions representing a majority of the workforce of the world’s largest coal miner, Coal India Ltd (CIL), might decide in favour of a strike on Monday, against the government’s plan to offload a five per cent stake in the company.
The unions fear a loss of jobs in the event of a stake sale. A call for strike, if taken, would spell trouble for the Kolkata-based miner’s plan to ramp up output and the government’s plan to meet its disinvestment target of Rs 40,000 crore this financial year.
“It was decided that we will go for strike the moment the coal minister announced the government’s decision to sell five per cent stake. Our stand is very clear,” Jibon Roy, general secretary, All India Coal Workers Federation, affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-backed Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), told Business Standard.
Asked when a strike would commence, Roy said, “It is a matter of strategy.” CIL would lose output worth Rs 200 crore in a single day of strike. Roy also said there were no differences within the five TUs in CIL on the issues of a strike.
The other unions (CITU says it represents about 90 per cent of the 383,000 workers) are linked to the All India Trade Union Congress, Indian National Trade Union Congress, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and Hind Mazdoor Sabha.
CIL was listed on the bourses in 2010 through an initial public offering in which the government raised Rs 15,199 crore by selling 10 per cent stake. The government holds the other 90 per cent and had originally planned to divest another 10 per cent, to get around Rs 20,000 crore from the market. Owing to the unions’ protest, the quantum of stake sale was halved last week.
Not enough, the unions have decided. “In today’s economic and political scenario, any disturbance in this 90 per cent versus 10 per cent ownership structure would not be tolerated by the unions,” Roy said.
Leaders of the five unions are to meet the CIL management and coal ministry officials on Monday.
Coal minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal had asked for this meeting last week, to try for agreement on other demands such as a a voluntary retirement policy for female workers and employing children of physically disabled persons.
