Transport Minister, unions talks inconclusive, to continue today

CHENNAI: The seventh round of the 14th wage revision talks between the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation led by Transport Minister SS Sivasankar and trade union representatives on Tuesday ended inconclusively with the unions strongly objecting to the corporation’s proposal to increase duration of the validity of the wage agreement to four years from the existing three. The talks would be continued on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters, CITU state president A Soundararajan said that the negotiations could not be concluded as the unions opposed changing the validity of the agreement to four years.

“The 3-year wage agreement system was in force for 45 years. It was changed to five years during the AIADMK rule. Trade unions staged a massive protest against this. After the DMK came to power, then Karunanidhi government changed the wage agreement period again to three years. Now we are opposing the proposal to change the agreement period to four years. This led to a stalemate in the negotiations. Minister said that he would consult the Chief Minister and talks would continue on Wednesday,” he told reporters after the talks.

Earlier, on Tuesday morning, immediately after the commencement of the talks, the Minister told the representatives that he would talk with the union representatives separately in another room on new demands.

DMDK Trade Union secretary Kaalirajan walked out of the negotiations in protest against the Minister’s decision to hold talks with the unions separately. “The Minister doesn’t want to negotiate on the decision to increase the duration of the validity of the wage agreement to four years from the existing three years. He also refuses to talk about the dearness allowance revision pending for 81 months to the pensioners. I have expressed my opposition to holding talks with unions separately,” Kaalirajan told reporters.