India: Unions suspend Tamil Nadu government workers’ strike
By
our correspondents
16 September 2017
The Joint Action Committee of the Government Teachers and Government Employees Organisations (JACTO-GEO) capitulated to a Tamil Nadu high court directive yesterday and shut down strike action and protests by 33,000 teachers and other state employees.
The indefinite state-wide strike began on Monday in defiance of a previous court order. The walkout was over long-outstanding demands for the abolition of a regressive pension scheme imposed on all employees who joined the public service after April 2003. Workers want the previous government-guaranteed pension scheme restored.
The strikers were also demanding the removal of pay scale anomalies, a 20 percent interim pay rise and an end to the existing contract employment system. The JACTO-GEO is an alliance of over 100 public sector employee and teacher unions.
The walkout is an indication of the growing determination of Indian workers to push back against the escalating social assaults by the Bharatiya Janatha Party-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) administration and other state governments.
Yesterday’s High Court hearing was in response to a so-called Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and a previous court ruling banning the strike. JACTO-GEO office bearers asked to be allowed to convene a meeting of the general membership body and return to work on Monday. This plea was rejected by the high court judges who declared: “When the court has stayed the strike, there is no question of getting the permission of the general body to withdraw the strike.”
According to media reports, the…