Wage revision: Bus staff in parts of TN begin strike as talks with govt fails

Thanjavur: A section of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation employees struck work in Thanjavur and in neighbouring Tiruchirapalli a day ahead of the state-wide stir call by the transport corporations.

As many as 120 government buses and 56 mofussil buses in Thanjavur were not operated after some bus drivers decided to go on strike following reported failure of talks with the state government over their demands, department officials said.

As the transport unions and the government failed to reach a settlement over wage revision in Tamil Nadu, Labour Progressive Federation (LPF) secretary M Shanmugam on Saturday said that they will go with the proposed indefinite strike in the state from May 15.

"We'll continue with the proposed strike tomorrow over issues of payment of arrears of pension amounts and wages," Shanmugam in a press briefing.

While the government insisted on dropping the strike, the union leaders demanded a permanent solution for addressing the issues related to payment of pension amount due to the employees.

The striking workers are demanding among other things, settlement of retirement benefits and payment of operational deficit to the transport corporations.

Ten major unions, including the Labour Progressive Federation (affiliated to DMK) and CITU which had called for the agitation, took part in the strike.

Several rounds of talks have been held between representatives of the worker unions and Transport Minister MR Vijayabhaskar in Chennai over the past few days.

Meanwhile, officials assured that government buses would run as per schedule across the state on Monday.