Govt writes down reforms in black and white for coal unions
NEW DELHI: A day after coal minister Piyush Goyal emphasized that there will be no going back on the plan to reform the coal mining sector, including opening it up for the private sector, Coal India workers trooped back to work.
Coming after the ‘go-ahead’ from the railway trade unions for inviting foreign and private capital in the transport behemoth, the normal functioning of Coal India on Friday led many to wonder whether trade unions have come around to accepting the inevitability of reforms and increasing competition from the private sector, provided their service conditions were not changed to their detriment.
Five major Coal India unions, including the Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh that is affiliated to the ruling BJP, agreed to return to work after only two days into the strike once the government offered them a joint panel for looking into their grievances but without budging from its stand to let private sector in coal mining,
For the unions, there were no additional takeaways. Going by past experience, every strike in the past has ended with some form of grievance redressal committee. So what made the unions retract so quickly?
For one, the unions appear to have realised they were fighting a shadow – privatisation of Coal India. The ordinance for taking over mines after their allocation was cancelled by the Supreme Court does not have any provision to privatize the state-run behemoth. Finance minister Arun Jaitley and Goyal have also unequivocally cleared the air on the issue several times.
Senior trade union leaders agree that calling off of the five-day strike by coal workers following negotiations with the government after two days of striking work, amounts to “give-and-take” at both ends. They said that while trade unions have to “allow limited amount of private capital getting into the field, they will ensure that there is no opening of floodgates”. Both sides have climbed down.
“Trade Unions have agreed to some amount of private capital being allowed, but reckless selling out or allowing private capital to become dominant players will not be acceptable,” said a senior union leader.
Last month saw railway unions softening their resistance to FDI and PPPs after Prime Minister, at a rally in Varanasi on December 25, assured that the federal transporter will not be privatized. Of course, unions have stuck to the mundane demands, like those relating to scrapping of new pension scheme (NPS) and DA mergers.
The coal ordinance has an enabling clause for allowing private sector into commercial coal mining in future. The unions, as also the Congress, had started by calling it ‘privatisation by stealth’ despite the fact that the opening up of the oil and power sectors have yielded rich dividends without diminishing the role of leading state-run players such as ONGC, IOC or NTPC.
Government sources argue that entry of private competition egged these companies to improve performance and modernise operations with the aim of retaining their flagship position. Similarly, consumers have benefitted from private entry in telecom and aviation. The decline in the fortunes of BSNL or Air-India and Indian Airlines are seen in terms of their botched management and policies than private competition.
The negotiations saw the government dismissing the fear over private companies undercutting Coal India’s price as a result of exploitative labour policies that the private miners may use.
It argued that there are enough number of laws to protect the workers’ interest. A price competition can happen only in a completely free-for-all market scenario, which is very unlikely to be allowed because of the adverse impact on generation. In an environment where power tariff is regulated and government goes by Coal India’s price as benchmark, the only thing that the state monopoly would have to do is to improve its efficiency through better utilization of manpower and induct a heavy dose of mechanization, the government stressed.
THE Income-Tax Department conducted search operations in two major pharmaceutical companies and a bakery chain. The pharma majors are Cipla Read more
INCOME-TAX authorities today raided the premises of Great Eastern Shipping Company, Ipca Laboratories and RNA Builders. Altogether, 40 premises have Read more
LONDON: A Non-Resident Indian plastic surgeon, who falsely claimed that his sister and uncle were killed in the September 11 Read more
NEW DELHI: San Francisco-based Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C. has invested Rs 88 crore for 33.3% stake in Indiabulls Credit Services Read more
