December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.
A year after 80 workers of Indian Telephone Industries Limited (ITI) Ltd were laid off last year, allegedly for attempting to unionise and demanding pay due to them, a fresh protest was held on Thursday, December 1, demanding their reinstatement. Hemanth, president of the newly formed workers’ union, told TNM, “We have filed a lawsuit against the company in the labour court. We will fight for our rights and protest until we get justice.” The agitating workers have written multiple letters to the management seeking reinstatement and clearance of salary dues but they went unanswered, he said.
ITI, a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), prevented 80 workers from entering the premises on December 1, 2021, saying their contractor has changed and that the workers have been terminated from jobs. In addition, ITI filed a lawsuit in the High Court of Karnataka alleging that the terminated employees were causing a commotion close to the company's premises. The court ordered them to participate in a mediation. When the mediation failed, the workers also filed a lawsuit in the High Court against the PSU, requesting reinstatement and payment of their outstanding salary dues.
The workers waged a protest for over four months before they received a promise of reinstatement from the Union government in April 2022. A letter by Ashwini Vaishnav, Union Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics and Information Technology, stated the protesting workers will be deployed in a phased manner.
The protesting workers
"It is to inform that ITI Ltd engages contract workers through outsourced manpower agencies. ITI Ltd., being the principal employer, re-examined the issue on the advice of the Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner, Bengaluru. Accordingly, the protesting contract workers were advised to register with the new contractor for deployment. The deployment will happen in a phased manner thereafter," read the letter issued by Ashwini Vaishnaw. However, the management has failed to take the workers back even eight months after the letter was sent.