Over 30,000 Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) employees, including bus drivers and conductors, will go on an indefinite strike from Monday midnight.
While a meeting has been called at the BEST headquarters on Monday afternoon, union leaders told The Hindu on Sunday night that the strike will continue till their key demands are met.
The demands
Shashank Rao, president of the BEST workers’ union, said they wanted their demands fulfilled, and not mere assurances.
“We have three key demands: fixation at master grade of 13,500 employees who have been employed after 2007 with retrospective effect, merging the BEST budget with the ‘A’ budget of the BMC, and immediately starting negotiations on the charter of demands submitted in May 2016,” Mr. Rao said.
On August 7, 2017, the BEST employees had gone on strike for a day. However, the protest was called off after certain demands were met. From December last year, the BEST workers have been threatening to again go on a strike. In a vote taken by the workers’ union in mid-December, a majority of BEST employees voted in favour for a strike in January.
Meanwhile, the BEST management has called the union for a two-day meeting on Monday and Tuesday. While the union has called the meeting a “farce”, the BEST said it was hopeful. “The meeting is for wage revision and to address issues of the employees,” Balasaheb Zodage, assistant public relations officer, BEST, said.