Telecom : Turbulent Transition

The indefinite strike from September 6 by three federations representing some 3.5 lakh employees of the departments of telecom operations and telecom services (DTO and DTS) was called off after three days, but all indications are that this is not the end of the turbulence attending on the corporatisation of these two government departments to form the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). The three demands raised by the federations were that the existing pension benefits of the employees must be protected, that job security must be guaranteed and that government must underwrite the financial viability of BSNL. The withdrawal of the strike suggests some sort of agreement between the employees' federations and the government on these demands, but no details are available still. The government has evidently agreed to protect the pension benefits of the employees, but it is not known if it has acceded to the federations' demand that this be done by retaining the pension payments as a charge on the Consolidated Fund, which would be an anachronism since with the creation of the BSNL the concerned employees would cease to be in government employment. The demand for job security must have been the least problematic, at least as long as the BSNL remains a government corporation. But it would indeed be instructive to know how exactly the government has satisfied the federations on their third demand: assurance of the perpetual financial viability of BSNL. One explicit concession announced by communications minister Ram Vilas Paswan is the ad hoc payment of Rs 1,000 per month to each employee on moving to BSNL.

While the demands of the major federations amounted, in sum, to asking for the best of both worlds – the security of government employment with the higher emoluments which would follow the move to the BSNL, they have not opposed the corporatisation of DTO and DTS per se, which is what a so-called national action committee against telecom corporatisation is doing. The action committee has condemned the calling off of the strike, charged the employees' federations with 'breaking the unity of workers' and called upon the employees to continue the strike. The call has not cut any ice immediately since the federations command the employees' support, but should problems arise in the process of the conclusion of the final agreement between the federations and the government, the action committee must be expected to be quick to fish in troubled waters. Clearly, given the momentous nature of the changes under way in the telecom sector, the finalising of the agreement with the federations is a task which must be handled with the utmost competence and complete commitment to the objective of corporatisation of the DTO and DTS on October 1.