Jute Mills Strike Series : Wage Board set up.

A wage board has been set up for the jute industry workers in the state of West Bengal.
This is in accordance with the tripartite agreement, between the workers, the jute mill
owners and the state government, that had been reached on 12 February 2010(the strike
formally ended on 14 February 2010), in the presence of the West Bengal Labour
Minister Anadi Kumar Sahu in Kolkata .The agreement was reached to end the 2 month
long mega-strike led by various unions in which over 2,50,000 workers from across the
party lines had taken part and had struck work in 52 factories in West Bengal. Though
unions affiliated to Union Railway Minister , Mamta Bannerji was not a part of the strike.
The agreement, which will be valid for three years, also had a provision of setting up of a
wage board to regularise the new wages for the workers for this period. The 7 member
wage board which will be finalising the worker’s grade ,pay scales ,perks and other such
matters will headed by a former judge Pradipta Roy and would also include
representation from both the unions and the mill owners .

As per the agreement reached in February the D.A.(dearness allowance) arrears of the
workers would be paid in six instalments over three years(the original demand was that
the DA arrears be cleared within three months).In the original 14 point charter of
demands DA arrear issue was the bone of contention. The daily wages of the entry level
workers was hiked from Rs 100 to Rs 157. Though Sanjay Kajaria, chairman jute mills
association, had told the media in February that all the workers issues have been
addressed. Though the workers had expressed that the mill owners had only assured them
that they would be considering all the demands of the workers but have made no
commitments and setting up of the wage board though is a part of the agreement ,much
remains to be done. Five unions including the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS),
affiliated to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the All India Trade Union Congress
(AITUC), affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) were not signatories to the
agreement as they had claimed that the agreement reached was not enough and would not
benefit the workers. But for the general good of the workers they too had ended the
strike. The workers have gone on strike after five rounds of talks between the unions and
the mill owners have failed in November/December 2009. The mammoth strike had
lasted from 14 December 2009 to 14 February 2010.

The jute mill owners are infamous for denying the workers their rights. One of the
workers present after the unions announced the end of strike Bholu claimed “We were
not paid proper Provident Fund on retirement even though it is being deducted from our
wages.” Another worker Kishan Das lamented that “we are not even paid our wages on
time”. The workers’ claim is that the mill owners owe them Rs 35000 on an average per
worker while there have instances of some reports in the media saying that the workers
got a mere Rs 62000 as PF after 42 years of service. “If this is the condition of
permanent workers the condition of non permanent workers can be imagined.” said
another worker “the non permanent workers were registered in the rolls as voucher,
temporary or zero employees and their names and designations were repeatedly changed
in the rolls to prevent them from getting the PF or ESI (employee state insurance )
benefits. The workers of the jute mills have regularly been forced to go on strike over
these issues in the past few years including for 63 days in 2007 and 18 days in 2008.
Each time some kind of agreement was reached but was never implemented fully.