Report received from Shri Jagnarayan Gupta, General Secretary, BEST Karmachari Sanghathana
(English translation of report in Marathi)
The contract workers of BEST (the public bus service in Mumbai) had recently struck work on the issue of not getting their wages on time. Due to this the bus services in five depots had got affected and the passengers suffered. The BEST Sangharsh Kamgar Karmachari Union has demanded to the administration that the workers should be paid on time and that all of them should be made permanent in the enterprise.
Due to these and other demands the Union has issued a notice that on 6th May at 3 pm demonstrations will be organised in the Wadala Bus Depot.
A contractor has leased buses to the BEST and two thousand of this contractor’s workers are working for BEST. Shri Shashank Rao, the leader of the BEST Sangharsh Kamgar Karmachari Union has demanded that these workers should be made permanent in BEST.
Shri Rao gave the information that the demands include the following: Till they are made permanent, these workers should be paid on the basis of the principle of “Equal pay for equal work”, all those working should be immediately given appointment letters, every month such workers should be given information about the fraction paid in the provident fund in their pay slip.