Tense situation prevailed near the administrative building of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) as hundreds of workers stormed the building on Tuesday demanding wage revision which was allegedly pending for the past six years.
The workers sat on the roads leading to the building and blocked vehicular movement police and security personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) somehow managed to stop them from barging into the building. The workers and leaders of various trade unions alleged the centre for trying to discriminate the VSP workers from their counterparts in other steel plants, which were under the purview of SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited).
Though an agreement was signed in 2012, revising the wages, it was implemented in the case of SAIL and the same was not implemented for the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant workers, lamented the employees on protest.
They raised slogans seeking wages on par with SAIL workers. According to the agitators, there has been no hike in the salaries of the workers for the past 10 years, while the pay pack has been the same for officers for the past 16 years.
They further pointed out that no recruitment was taken up afresh to fill the vacancies. Over 150 employees would be retiring next month, they said
Earlier, on May 3 union leaders had protested against the centre’s move to privatise the steel plant in Vishakapatnam.