About 14,000 contract workers affiliated to AITUC of the State-owned Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) commenced an indefinite strike today demanding among other things service regularisation.

A tripartite meeting convened by Mr R. Sivaraj, Central Assistant Labour Welfare Commissioner, with the NLC management and representatives of the AITUC on April 19 had failed to find a solution to end the strike.

AITUC leader, Mr A. Sekar, told PTI that the NLC management had reached an agreement with the union in 2008 for service regularisation of the contract workers in a phased manner.

However, the management had not implemented the agreement so far, he alleged.

Asked whether power generation would be affected due to the strike, a company spokesperson said, “not a single MW of power generation was affected”.

The spokesperson also criticised the employees for going ahead with the indefinite strike ahead of a “conciliatory meeting” scheduled for April 25.

To a query on work getting stalled in NLC-owned mines, he said, “production in all our mines is not affected. We have got enough stock to run…”

NLC’s total power generation from three thermal power stations is 2490 MW. Tamil Nadu now gets 1170 MW and the remaining capacity is shared by Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry.

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