Major Port & Dock Workers Federation announces One day token strike on 5th April 2022

Chennai, March 26, 2022: The leaders of National Co-ordination Committee of Major Port &  Dock Workers Federations today met Journalists at Chennai and issued a joint statement as below:

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The National Co-ordination Committee of Major Port & Dock Workers Federations, affiliated with HMS, CITU, INTUC & AITUC, decided to observe one day token strike on 5th April 2022 immediately after observing 2 days All India Strike on 28th & 29th March 2022 for which the call was given by the 10 Central Trade Unions.

The Port workers have served strike notice on 30.11.2021, with certain important issues such as..

• Against converting the Major Ports from service model to Landlord model and privatizing the Terminals of the Ports by handing over it to PPP/BOT operators.
• Demanding withdrawal of the anti-national, anti-Port and anti-labor decision of the Govt of Inaia lo provide additional concessions/remissions to the corporates, PPP/BOT operators in the Major Ports.
• To wihdraw the implementation of National Monetization Pipeline at 9 Major Ports in 31 projects
• To implement all the pending items from the previously signed agreements, settlements and understandings of employees including Pensioners.
• To negotiate the new wage settlement to be implemented with effect from 01.01.2022 on the joint Charter of Demands submitted by the Federations.
• To pay productivity linked reward to the Port & Dock Employees for the year 2020-21 as per the MOU reached between IPA & Federations
• To refund the Deamess Allowance frozen for the period of 9 months from 01.10.2020 to 30.06.2021.

Subsequently the Chief Labour Commissioner (C) intervened in the dispute as per the provisions of ID Act, 1947 to hold the conciliation proceedings with the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and waterways, Indian Ports Association and Five Recognized Federations.

As advised by the CLC(C) the IPA & Ministry representatives discussed with the Federations and agreed to sort out the issues highlighted through the Strike Notice amicably. From the outcome of the meeting the CLC could realize that almost all the problems highlighted by the Federations which are directly related to Port workers are still pending for decision by the Ministry. Similarly, non-compliance of several previous settlements has deteriorated the situation further.

Unfortunately, due to the evasive reply and delaying tactics of Port Management & Govt of India under the Ministry of Ports & Sipping, clespite the efforts taken by the CLC no fruitful result was achieved during the conciliation. CLC tried his level best to create cordial atmosphere n the Major Ports. But at lost the CLC was constrained to record (FOC) "failure on conciliation" on 10.03.2022 due to lethargic attitude of the Govt and Port managements.

Under these circumstances, the National Coordination Committee of Five Federations met at Chennai on 25 & 26th March 2022 and unanimously decided to go for 'ONE DAY TOKEN STRIKE ON 05.04.2022 (Tuesday) in order to secure their legitimate demands as mentioned above.

Issued by:

Mr.Raja Sridhar (HMS)

Mr.PM.MD.Haneef (HMS)

Mr.P.K.Samantray (AITUC)

Mr.C.D.Nandakumar (CITU)

Mr.Sudhakar Apraj (HMS)

Mr.B.CH.Masen (AITUC)

Mr.Mohan K.Aswani (INTUC)

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