UNITED THEY FIGHT: Trade union leaders at a meeting at Tirupur on Thursday. — Photo: M. Balaji

TIRUPUR: Blaming the trade bodies of the hosiery industry for adopting delaying tactics blocking progress in wage talks, the All Trade Unions Joint Agitation Committee on Thursday gave a call for a token strike on September 18 here to protest against the "adamant" stand by industry bodies.

With the stand-off continuing even after four rounds of direct talks between the unions and industry bodies in the last three months, the Committee said all leading political parties would support the strike, which the unions state is to protect the interest of over two lakh workers.

Leaders of all six recognised trade unions, C. Palanisamy, K. Balamani (AITUC); M. Chandran (CITU); P.K.N. Dhandapani, A. Perumal (INTUC); S. Muthukumarasamy, P. Ramasamy (MLF); G. Ramakrishnan, G. Balasubramani (LPF) and Centwin A. Mani (ATP) attended the meeting.

Industry captains have maintained that the wage agreement should be for five years with productivity linked wages and no hike for the first year. When the trade unions insisted that the agreement should be for three years as usual and demanded substantial hike considering the increase in prices of essential commodities, the talks failed to progress, the leaders said.

A monitoring committee with 2,000 members had been formed to make the strike a success.

Stating that the strike was imposed on the workers, Mr. Chandran said the unions would undertake a four-day campaign from September 14 to create awareness among the workers.

Strange practice

"They are adopting an unusual stand from the beginning. It is strange that the industrialists are coming up with a set of demands during wage talks. Usually we, the unions, submit the charter of demands on behalf of the workers and the agreement would come finally. This time they are placing counter demands," said Mr. Dhandapani.

Finding fault with the industrialists' argument that they have been facing stiff competition with their Chinese counterparts, the union leaders said the competition did not deter further investments and that the exports were surging. They said most factories did not provide agreed wages to their workers.

"Unwarranted"

The executive committee of the Tirupur Exporters' Association would meet here on Friday to discuss the latest developments. President A. Sakthivel said the token strike was totally unwarranted and not in the interest of the knitwear industry.

"We are ready for further talks. Because of the strike, not only the industrialists would suffer but the workers too would lose their wages.

No worker likes to go on strike. The trade unions are misleading them," he said.

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