BENGALURU: It has been a year of unrelenting protest for 80 former workers of ITI Limited, who were terminated. To mark the anniversary of the protest, several organisations joined the agitators, who have been sitting outside the ITI gates, to express their solidarity.
On December 1, 2021, the workers were stopped from entering the ITI compound. They were informed that their workers’ contracts have terminated. The former workers had said that they had no prior intimation and were never under contract with the company.
No minimum notice was served, they had said, alleging that the company had taken the step after the workers had formed a union to demand the amount the company owed them. They had deliberately targeted the workers using the contract as an instrument, they alleged.
“It has been a year of protest now, and the ITI management has failed to reinstate the workers. The tenure of the terminated workers varies between three and 35 years, who were involved in essential work of the ITI. However, they were labelled as contract labourers and denied basic rights,” the AICCTU said in a statement.
Despite multiple attempts to broker an agreement between ITI management and the workers’ union, it has failed. Meanwhile, the union continues to put pressure on Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who had written a letter to ITI Limited in April this year to formulate a new contract for the workers.