Senior officials of Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) have extended their “silent support” to the ongoing strike of the 3000-odd workers at the PSU over the non-payment of salary for at least seven months, the striking employees of HEC said on Monday. The president of Hatia Kamgaar Union, Laldeo Singh said that the strike was unlikely to end soon as the higher management of the company has not shown interest in holding dialogues with the striking workers.
“How do they expect us to work when we don’t even have money to buy ration? We will not resume work until our pending payments are cleared. Seven months is a long time,” said Singh.
The HEC workers went on a tool-down strike on December 2 against non-payment of salary, and are yet to have any dialogue with senior authorities. On Monday, the striking workers locked the main gate of HEC campus as a mark of protest against the non-payment of their salary.
Their strike has also grabbed the attention of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), which has expressed the need to hold dialogues with the union ministry of commerce and industries to ensure payment of salaries to HEC workers at the earliest and avoid huge losses to the company. In a recent tweet, the AICCTU claimed that HEC may have incurred a loss of Rs.1 crore due to workers’ strike so far, and a greater crisis could only be averted if immediate actions are taken to ensure the disbursement of payment to the workers.
Workers in HEC have had to deal with non-payment of salary even in the past. In 2015-16, HEC workers had sent at least 100 postcards to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking when “Acche Din” would come for these workers following non-payment of salary for several months.
No senior authority from the organisation was willing to talk about this issue on record on Monday. However, on the condition of anonymity, an official said that many employees were forced to go on a strike as they did not even have enough money to pay for their children’s education.