Around 90% of BSNL’s employees will enter a one-day strike today to protest a retrenchment scheme aimed at cutting the company’s workforce by a third.
Some 275,000 BSNL workers, executives and non-executives are expected to take part in the strike, with services to some 92 million mobile and 29 million fixed line users disrupted. Emergency services will remain unaffected, according to the Economic Times.
At the center of contention is a retrenchment scheme proposal that BSNL had submitted to parliament Nov 30. The scheme purportedly removes benefits such as medical allowances and travel concessions from workers aged 45 and above who have served BSNL for at least 15 years.
In addition to regular retirement benefits, suitable employees will instead get an extra payment equivalent to 60 days salary for each completed year of service or salary for the number of months the employees has left in service, whichever is less. Compensation will be limited to a maximum of 60 months’ salary. The scheme, dubbed voluntary retirement scheme, has been under discussion since 2009.
The strike is also opposing what a BSNL workers’ union views as the Indian governments’ bias toward private telecom operators, at the expense of state-run entities such as BSNL. Union spokesperson C K Gundanna toldNDTV biased policies had led to BSNL’s current financial woes, which led to the retrenchment scheme’s proposal.
BSNL reported a net loss of 18.23 billion ($339.4 million) in 2009 – 2010. Union executives told The Hindu the Indian government had not provided enough funding for the upgrade of BSNL’s infrastructure and had forced the carrier into financially unviable service areas.
BSNL had in October expressed its longing to exit its mandate to provide WiMax services after being saddled with unappealing 2.4Ghz spectrum in a market that looks set to be dominated by TD-LTE.