The employees of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (Visakhapatnam steel plant), numbering 35,000 or so, half of them being permanent staff, went on a day’s strike here on Tuesday.
The action was meant to protest against the decision of the Union Government to offload 10 per cent of its stake in the PSU, amounting to Rs 2,500 crore, through an initial public offering.
The IPO was deferred recently but the employees went ahead with the strike with the support of all the unions.
There was heavy police deployment in the steel plant and the strike was peaceful.
Privatisation fear
Trade unions, PSU employees’ associations and several other organisations expressed support to the striking employees and said there was no need for the Government to resort to disinvestment and that it was only prelude to privatising the plant.
Earlier, Mr A.P. Chowdhary, the Chairman and Managing Director of the steel plant, appealed to the unions to desist from the strike, as it would have a cumulative effect on production for days.
It was not desirable, he said, adding that the disinvestment decision was only taken to leverage funds and for better performance and had nothing to do with privatisation.
But his appeal was rejected by the unions.
Production hit
According to a press release issued by the RINL, production was affected.
“One blast furnace including its downstream units is down. The plant is running at a minimum level as the manpower strength is limited to 100 per cent of executives and around 20 per cent of non-executives. Keeping safety in view, the units are being run at a minimum level,” said the release.
Further, the release adds, there are around 21 maharatna/navratna companies in the country and RINL-VSP is the only company that is not listed.
Listing is mandatory for VSP to keep its navratna tag intact. Listing of the company enables organisation to grow further and helps in realisation of ambitious expansion plans in the next decade. Therefore, disinvestment is essential.
The contention of the management that disinvestment is essential for the expansion and growth of the plant has been rejected by the unions.
They argue that the company is capable of funding future projects by raising debt on its own strength and out of its internal accruals.