CMRL’s stand off with its employees is not a recent issue, though it may have affected commuters over the last couple of days.
Last year, Chennai Metro Rail carried out a pay revision that left many of the staff deeply disappointed. There were several protests carried out against pay revision and privatisation of a section of the operations. Subsequently, in October last year, many of the employees got together and formed the CMRL Employees Union, officials said.
Tracing the recent history to the crisis puts us back to two months ago, when a letter from the union stirred up issues once again. The immediate trigger, however, is the dismissal of eight staff members on 26 April.
According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), the eight employees were dismissed for grave offences: one member was allegedly involved in theft and some other staff members had written letters to the private contractor who has been in-charge of the operations. “The union itself was illegal and so was the protest. They cannot write a letter to the private contractor saying Chennai Metro Rail should not hire them. This apart, for months together, many of these protesters have been harassing the outsourced staff in the station.” an official said.
This apart, CMRL said, the protesters had assaulted two of the staff members during the protest on Monday and went to the extent of deliberately sabotaging the system, which led to failure of the automatic signalling system, essential for smooth services.
Members of the union denied all these charges and demanded that all eight staff members be reinstated, in a meeting with the Labour Commission on Tuesday. “The talks concluded indefinitely and will continue on Tuesday too. While the staff wanted the jobs back for the staff, CMRL officials were reluctant,” an official of the Labour Commission said.
A. Soundarajan, president of the CITU Tamil Nadu, said the main reason why the staff were terminated was for writing the letter to the private contractor. “I was the one who wrote the letter to the contractor but just because their names were on the letterpad, they have been dismissed,” he added.
One of the members of the union, who was also dismissed, said: “We only asked for actual pay; we need promotion and recognition too. We have worked longer hours than what was mandated, and not even ladies got a drop or pick up during odd hours. We even went against outsourcing only because CMRL will only incur more expenditure as we get paid ₹28,000 as against the outsourced staff ₹60,000.”