The CITU affiliated Steel Employees Trade Union on Monday said that they would resort to an indefinite strike in the steel industry from January 5, if genuine demands of workers were not settled by the year end.

Rejecting the MoU signed by three trade union bodies with SAIL on wage revision of workers, Mr Bishnu Mohanty president of SETU said that “We are not at all ready to accept the illegal memorandum of understanding signed by some of the unions with SAIL on November 29th 2009 at the National Joint Committee for Steel as the unions are not recognized in steel plants.”

He said that “CITU and INTUC are the recognised unions in different steel plants in SAIL and HMS and AITUC which signed the MoU have lost their representative character as they are not recognized.”

The SETU had been demanding 28% minimum guaranteed benefits, fringe benefits at par with executives, wage settlement of contract workers and payment of INR 1000 declared by the Steel Minister for contract workers from September 2008.

Mr Mohanty said that SETU will organize a rally in front of Rourkela steel plant on December 18 and later serve strike notice to the management.

(Sourced from Business Line)