Morcha-like voice on wage - Trinamul speaks for tea wage revision first, echoes Gurung

TT, Siliguri, Dec. 9: Trinamul has stirred awake on the tea wage revision issue, two days after Gorkha Janmukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung said he would personally sit for talks to settle the pay stalemate.

Both the Morcha and Trinamul hold similar opinions on the three-year wage revision and the demand for minimum wage.

Like the Morcha chief, the Trinamul trade union also said today that it wanted the wage revision to happen first. It did not want to club this demand with the long-term issue of minimum wage for the tea industry.

The Joint Forum, which has been steering talks on both the issues, has said the state must announce the minimum wage first, before more talks are held on wage revision that has been on hold since April.

The Morcha union, the Darjeeling Terai Dooars Plantation Labour Union, is part of the 23-union-strong Joint Forum, but after Gurung's assertion not to wait for the minimum wage agreement, its unity could suffer a blow.

Both Trinamul and Morcha leaders, however, said that though their opinions are similar, no decision would be taken jointly by them at the tripartite tea wage meeting slated for December 12.

Trinamul union leaders today said they saw "political intentions" in the demand to stall wage revision talks till the minimum wage issue is decided on. It did not name the Joint Forum, though.

"A section of tea trade unions which are affiliated to political rivals of Trinamul are playing politically on the wage negotiations and attempting to pose fresh challenges before the state government. Despite the state's keenness to fix a minimum wage for the tea industry and simultaneously work out a revised wage rate... these people are creating problems in the tripartite talks," said Alok Chakraborty, the working president of Trinamul Tea Plantation Workers' Union, here today.

"We have understood their political intentions and would strongly advocate at the next tripartite talks that the state labour department, in consultation with tea planters and trade unions, should move ahead and fix the revised wage rates. There can be discussions on the rate of increase but we would vehemently oppose any attempt by some of these unions to foil the talks in the name of minimum wages," he said.

Chakraborty said: "They (the rival unions) should understand that the state has already taken up the task to form a committee which would recommend minimum wages for the industry. We expect that some more trade unions will support our stand at the meeting, may be separately." He did not speak about the Morcha's stand.

The Joint Forum has among its constituents the CPM-backed Citu, the Congress-backed Intuc and the Morcha union, among others.

"We are ready to wait for another three months by which the state should table the minimum wage rates. As it would take some more time to notify and implement these rates, we are ready to sit for discussions then to fix a revised wage for the interim period," a representative of the Joint Forum said.

"We would surely go to the meeting to hear if the state is saying something on minimum wages but will not speak on any issue pertaining to immediate revision of wages. There might be differences among unions but we would stick to our stand," the forum leader said.

Even as the representatives of Joint Forum say so, leaders of Morcha union, one of their constituents, seem to be in a fix.

While on one way they are backing the forum's demand to fix minimum wages, they are also speaking in favour of an early revision, as it was asserted by Morcha president Bimal Gurung that he would intervene in wage negotiations and sit with planters to forge an agreement for tea workers serving in estates of Darjeeling hills.

"We want the state to fix minimum wages and have our complete support at the Joint Forum. However, we must understand that what our party president has said is logical," Suraj Subba, the Morcha union general secretary said. "In the next rounds of talks, we would ask the state to say something on minimum wages or give us a decision in writing."