Leading trade unions of the jute industry will go on one-day token strike in mills on February 12 to press for their demands, the National Union of Jute Workers said today.
"All 20 active jute trade unions have agreed for the one- day strike on February 12 and we have already served notice today," union's General Secretary Ganesh Sarkar told PTI.
"If the government and mill management do not address our concerns we will resort to indefinite strike. The wage agreement is due since February 2013," he said.
Trade unions were mainly pressing for wage hike. The last 61-day industry-wide strike took place from December 14 in 2009 to Feburary 13, 2010.
Though trade unions backed by INTUC, CITU, AITUC, BMS and some others have joined the strike, the Trinamool Congress- backed trade union has declined to extend support, Sarkar said.
The unions claimed the Trinamool Congress trade union does not have any significant presence and impact on jute sector and hence it will be a total shut down of jute mills.
The strike holds significance as the Mamata Banerjee-led government is totally against any bandhs and strike.
The state government was set to achieve a target of 'zero man days lost' within 2014 after already brought down the figures to 5,000 from 65 lakh man days lost, two years back.
The Indian Jute Mills Association said that strike may put the industry in jeopardy which is already facing dwindling business after dilution of the Mandatory Jute Packaging Act.
"The industry has a capacity to produce 4.6 lakh bales of jute bags while the order is between 1.22 lakh bales and 0.27 lakh bales," jute industry veteran Sajay Kajaria said.
"The strike will ruin the industry further. Both farmers and workers would lose interest and would search other avenues for earning. The worst-affected would be the 40 million farmers who would not sow the crop from March in 15 districts of West Bengal," he said.
The jute industry employ almost 2.53 lakh workers directly and an additional 1.6 lakh as allied regions.
