telecoms

“The strike was spontaneous with eight crore people participating in it. It is an expression of deep indignation of the masses against the pernicious economic and labour policies of the United Progressive Alliance government,” Gurudas Dasgupta, general secretary of the All-India Trade Union Congress, told reporters.

Female precarious workers for the Korean firm Kiryung electronics today enter their 1,100th day of action in demand of direct employment.

The workers, represented by the Communication Workers Union, have been offered a 4.1% pay rise by the company, meaning in real terms a pay cut. Official inflation in the Isle of Man is running at 6.5%, though as workers spend more on necessities such as food and gas, which have seen global price hikes in the past year, they are more severely hit by inflation in necessities.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) and the South African Communications Union (Sacu) have received a certificate of non-resolution from the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). The certificate allows union members working at Telkom to go on strike from Friday to Tuesday. This amounts to three days where more than half the company’s employees will be on strike.

The company plans a one-time payment for each worker in 2011 that may be more than 1,000 euros ($1,350), if financial and customer-service goals are met in 2010, Thomas Sattelberger, the board member in charge of personnel, told a press briefing in Bonn today. The total cost would be in the range of "two-digit'' million euros, he said.

Taken from Bloomberg.com

'The employees are still very angry about the company's plans for them,' Ver.di trade union strike leader Ado Wilhelm said in an interview with German news agency DPA.

'The people are highly motivated and are not allowing themselves to be cowed into not participating (in the strikes),' he added.

Ado Wilhelm, who is organizing the strike on behalf of ver.di, told heise online that service had been detrimentally affected. The protest is a reaction to the group's plans to outsource some 50,000 employees in the new T- Service division. Today, the labor union says that 7000 people went on strike across Germany. The protests are to continue through the weekend.

The strikes have also spread to a team wiring up services for officials and the media at the G8 summit next month on the Baltic coast.