The Hindu : National : Insurance employees go on strike

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 24, 2005

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National

Insurance employees go on strike

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 23 . About 80,000 employees of the four public sector general insurance companies went on a two-day strike on Wednesday in protest against the proposed increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) ceiling in the insurance sector and "outsourcing" of health insurance coupled with their demand for higher wages.

According to reports, while the General Insurance Corporation (GIC), the holding company, functioned "normally", insurance business transactions in the four subsidiaries, namely, New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance and United India Insurance, came to a complete standstill throughout the country.

The two-day strike call was given jointly by a host of insurance employees unions as the representative bodies for about 80,000 officers and staff (Class III & IV employees) of the four GIC subsidiaries. .

According to the NCGIOA President, R.K. Dwivedi, the strike was mainly to protest against the "step-motherly" treatment being meted out to the public sector general insurance companies on the wage revision issue this time.

The president of GIEAIA, Gurudas Dasgupta, told newspersons at a late afternoon press conference that he had met the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, on the wage increase and other issues. However, since that meeting did not yield any result, he said a trade union delegation would be meeting the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on Thursday to apprise him of the developments in the general insurance sector. He said if the UPA Government failed to respond positively to their demands, the nation should be prepared for a prolonged strike. in the general insurance sector.

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