Follow us on:   

Workers to go on strike from Tuesday at world’s biggest coal miner
January 5, 2015, 8:20 am

The coal unions say the move to bring in private players will mean job losses, and that they will fight the legislation [Image: National Geographic]

The coal unions say the move to bring in private players will mean job losses, and that they will fight the legislation [Image: National Geographic]

Angry unions are threatening to stop work at the world’s biggest coal miner, Coal India Ltd. Statements on Monday from five workers’ bodies said they are going ahead with a five-day strike beginning Tuesday to protest the government’s plans to introduce a Bill in order to privatise the sector and an executive order by the government last month to initiate allocation of coal mining licences.

The stir has been called by all unions of Coal India Ltd, that accounts for about 80 per cent of India’s total coal output, and its subsidiary companies.

The unions had boycotted a meeting called by India’s Coal Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday. Coal India employs 346,000 people across the country.

The government plans to bring in more efficient private companies. The coal unions say that will mean job losses, and that they will fight the legislation.

Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Chairman of Western Coalfield Ltd (WCL), a subsidiary company of Coal India Ltd, said that the strike would hit the company’s financial position again and lead to losses this year as well.

The five central trade unions, INTUC, BMS, AITUC, HMS and CITU, have given a strike notice to Coal India and called the stir from January 6-10. Incidentally the ruling party-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) is also joining the strike.

“We have called a strike over our demands, which would favour workers. We have trained manpower, which the private sector does not have. We are confident that we will achieve our target production,” Indian National Trade Union Congress official Pradeep Kokase said.

“This will probably be the biggest ever strike in the industry,” added AITUC General Secretary Gurudas Dasgupta.

Coal fuels 60 per cent of the country’s power production.

Official estimates say one day of lost work at Coal India may potentially cause a loss of 1.3 million metric tons in output, valued at about 2 billion rupees ($31.4 million).

India has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal at 61 billion tonnes but is forced to import record amounts as Coal India is unable to meet production targets. India’s coal import is set to go up significantly in the next financial year, with the estimate for 2015-16 at 220-240 million tonnes.

India’s top court in September last year cancelled the licenses of 214 coal blocks out of the 218 awarded to state and private firms since 1993.

 TBP and Agencies