Karnataka: Penalised for Unionising, Terminated ITI Workers at Continue Protest for Over a Month

Tilkawati (55) was seen sitting on the 37th day of a peaceful protest at the Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) unit of Bangalore. The reason behind the protest is her termination from the organisation, which she joined in 1983 as an operator.

The ITI on December 1, 2021 arbitrarily ousted 120 workers from their jobs. The stranded workers at the main gate were informed by an Human Resource department official of the company having no work for them. Tilkawati was one of them; she was stripped off her job for becoming a member of a union that recently came to existence at the Bangalore unit of the ITI. The Karnataka General Labour Union (KGLU) affiliated to the All India Central Council of Trade Union (AICCTU) was formed at the initiative of contract workers employed at ITI in 2020.

Tilkawati / Protesting Worker / ITI Bangalore

The Indian Telephone Industries is a public sector undertaking (PSU) company headquartered in Bengaluru under the Department of Telecommunication, Ministry of Communication, Government of India.

Tilkawati’s struggle against the ITI management started in 2020 during the first phase of the COVID-19 induced lockdown. As many as 400 workers, including her, were laid off by the ITI management without salaries in hand. As a lone bread earner for her family, she was compelled to take money from a money lender to survive in the subsequent months. “Rs 14,000 used to be my salary and my service for more than three decades (37 years) was not valued by the ITI management because I demanded my hard earned money,” Tilkawati told NewsClick. The senior most among the contract workers is yet to get salaries for two months of 2020 before they were laid off.

The workers are aghast by the employer’s ‘anti-workers’ decision.

After the first wave of COVID-19, workers said they requested the managment to disburse their salary but were allegedly ridiculed. At first, 28 workers collectively united to form a union in June 2020 and knocked the doors of the labour court and filed a case. After 14 months of legal fight against the ITI authority, the case was won in August 2021 and the workers were paid salaries of two pending months. “This brought a humiliating defeat to the ITI authority, a government institution of high stature,” said Praveen Kumar (30), a testing and de-bugging engineer who was part of the 28 workers in taking up the regularisation issue via court. He was on an official visit to Uttarakhand and on arrival, he was terminated from the job. He has worked on on-site production and maintenance of defence communication devices.

Minutes of the discussion between ITI and Workers Union on regularisation.

Accessing minutes of the meeting, NewsClick found violations of the Labour Commissioner’s instruction to the employer. The ITI management brazenly curbed the right of workers by not paying heed to the workers’ requests on regularisation despite instruction from the Regional Labour Commissioner (Central), Bangalore. The RLC clearly mentioned “the management of ITI Ltd to consider the age and social status of contractual workers and allow all 80 workers to work in ITI Ltd.” But the ITI authority ignored the advice of the conciliation officer.

The denial of the ITI management is a clear violation of Section 33 of the Industrial Disputes Act, which states that conditions of employment must remain unchanged during the hearing of the dispute. However, through media reports, ITI argued the lapse of the agreement with the contractor and subsequent termination of workers.

Repeated calls by NewsClick to the Human Resource team and management went unanswered.

Workers have alleged that beside evading paying their salaries, the authorities have also not paid Provident Fund and Employee State Insurance.

The agitating workforce comprises skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers. From operators to technicians to engineers, they were involved in fibre optics, broadband connectivity, and defence and surveillance technology contracts across the country, including in remote villages and border regions.

Gayathri and Ashwini / ITI workers

Half of the protesting workers hail from the backward sections of society and the minutes of the meeting held under the supervision of the RLC too mentions considering their social status.

Ashwini (25), along with her father, and Gayathri (27) with her husband (both belong to the Dalit community) had served the ITI as operators for years. All four lost their jobs because they asked the due salary from the lockdown period. Their dependants are now at the mercy of either money lenders or friends and distant relatives. As per Gayathri, she and her husband have served the purpose of national security by working for all three defence forces i.e. the Army, the Navy and the Air force but in return, they have been pushed into a precarious situation.

In a letter dated December 4, 2021, sent by the AICCTU to Ashwini Vasihnaw, (the Minister for Communications, Electronics, Information & Technology and Railways), the union underlined that the ITI workers were deployed during the first COVID-19 lockdown to manufacture 3,000 hospital ventilators on an emergency basis. As the AICCTU letter puts it, “These workers have dedicated their lives to M/s ITI and have been part of various works in defense for the security of the nation.” https://twitter.com/aicctukar/status/1467484049132326916

Acknowledging the social status of majority of the terminated workers, the union had also presented its grievances to the Social Welfare Department, Government of Karnataka, pleading for reinstating the workers. On December 30, 2021, the Social Welfare Department issued a letter to the ITI management on illegal practice of manual scavenging work in the campus followed by termination of two manual scavengers. It hinted to take legal action if workers were not taken back at the earliest.

Speaking to NewsClick over the phone, Maitreyi Krishnan, the state committee member of AICCTU and Karnataka General Labour Union, who is representing the workers in several cases in the labour court, said, “The ITI management terminated exactly those workers who were part of the case and those not part of it were inducted back to work. Moreover Labour commissioner’s instructions were not implemented says much about a government institution which could have been a ‘Model Employer’. Workers with service years between 10-37 years got targeted for organizing and unionizing themselves.

The ongoing protest is a hallmark of challenge against the contract labour system. And most striking feature of the protest is the large scale solidarity it has received from different parts of the world. From the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU) to Greece, Maldives, Morocco and labour unions across Karnataka and India have expressed support to the protesting ITI workers, said Maitreyi.