Miners cry foul over SCCL claims

Union leaders accuse the coal mining company of resorting to unfair labour practices

​Hyderabad: Alleging that the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) is resorting to unfair labour practices, several trade unions contested the management’s claim of higher coal production.

CITU State general secretary M Saibabu said nearly 40,000 workers had been on strike out of the total workers’ strength of 52,000 of the SCCL. And, irrespective of strikes, about 10,000 workers always attended the duties on maintenance works to ensure preventing fire accidents, collapsing the wells and the like, he added.

But, the SCCL management, hand-in-glove with the government and the TRS affiliated workers union, has been trying to mislead people of the State, he said. He asked the SCCL if the production had not hit why the government brought the entire coal belt areas spread in six districts under the surveillance deploying large number of police force.

Adding to this, the management had been enticing the workers in the underground coal mines offering double duties, allowing private agencies engaged in earth moving work to mine the coal in violation of the labour laws, he said.

AITUC leader K Gangadhar Rao alleged that so far 1,600 workers had been arrested by the police to repress the workers on strike demanding implementation of the dependent employment in the SCCL. But, both the management and the government had been trying to wash their hands throwing the blame on the courts for not able to implement the dependent employment which had been in practice for nearly 40 years in the collieries, he pointed out.

Indian Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) State leader S Venkateswarlu said there were 29 underground and 16 surface mines in the coal belt. All the non-registered and registered workers’ unions had formed into two separate Joint Action Committees (JACs).

In the name of double duties, SCCL was allowing work on Sunday’s which was holiday and even people in inebriated conditions were being permitted to go into the underground coal mines, he said.

He demanded that the SCCL post the profits on account of the production during the strike period and demanded prosecution of the management for resorting to unfair labour practices.

While the TNTUC president N K Bose expressed the union’s solidarity to fight for the cause of dependent employment, TSUTF leader A Narsi Reddy found fault with the attempts to portray the dependent employment as hereditary employment.

He said it was against the backdrop of falling coal production that the management and the government had been trying to bring the strike to an end willy-nilly. He said the total persons applied under the dependent employment were only around 7,000.

Meanwhile, a round table meeting held here on Monday on the ongoing strike of the SCCL workers lashed at the management and the government for resorting to illegal arrests, declaring Section 144, invoking Section 30 of the Police Act to prevent meetings, rallies and protests to express dissent by the workers by erecting police pickets at all coal mines.

The leaders alleged that it was the failure on the part of the government not to properly draft the proceedings on its earlier notification of dependent employment resulting in courts scrapping the same.