BMTC strike: Wait may be indefinite this time

The indefinite strike called by the KSRTC and BMTC unions may leave the transport corporation crippled, with the unions claiming that 90% of the employees of the transport corporation will be participating in the strike.

Although the management officials are optimistic and claim that only 30% of the services will be affected, all the officials of the KSRTC and BMTC have been pushed into services to ensure the commuters’ journey is at least a little less harrowing.

Although the call for strike itself is not the first in the recent past, this will be the first time that a strike of this magnitude is going to happen in the KSRTC since late 1990s.

The unions, whose role has mostly been limited since the bifurcation of the transport corporations into four (BMTC, KSRTC, NEKSRTC, NWKSRTC) now hope for a comeback.

A similar strike was called for in April by unions to protest against unilateral wage hike and demands for a proper wage revision after discussion with the unions. The strike was called off at the last minute when the management agreed to the demands of the unions and promised that in future they would be consulted.

According to the union members, the management has ‘breached’ their confidence and broken their promise. “They have tasted power and do not want to let it go, but we will take it from their unwilling hands,” said HV Ananthasubba Rao, convenor of the joint committee.However, top officials of the BMTC maintain that the claims made by the unions are false and there is no chance of a negotiation at all.

“During the meetings in April, we had promised to discuss wage revision with them. First they asked for a few days time and we gave them time to study the proposal. However, after that deadline, they asked for another week’s time. Since wage revision was already delayed and employees were already discouraged, we decided to go for 10% wage revision,” said KR Srinivas, MD, BMTC. Manjunath Prasad, MD, KSRTC said that this the highest revision that could be offered.

Srinivas added that employees are actually happy with the revision, however, they may stay away from work out of fear of the union leaders. “What we are concerned about is union leaders preventing employees from working,” said a senior BMTC official.

With neither the unions nor the management willing to see eye to eye, commuters who are caught in the middle will have to suffer for the next couple of days.