Nearly 55,000 officers of 14 public sector oil companies have decided to strike work indefinitely from January 7 to seek higher wages, Association of Scientific & Technical Officer's vice president P K Sharma said in New Delhi on Tuesday
The officers of 14 PSUs including ONGC, BPCL, HPCL, GAIL, OIL, Balmer and Lawrie and Cochin Refineriy have agreed to participate in the said strike.
"All offshore activities will stop operations from 6 a.m. on Wednesday and cooling of refineries will start from today (Monday) evening itself," Sharma said.
We are not going to produce any oil and gas as well as there will be no supply of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) from tomorrow onwards, he said adding that the loss is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore per day due to this strike.
Oil Sector Officers' Association (OSOA) said that it has resorted to this move after exhausting all channels.
NTPC executives support oil sector strike, to intensify stir
Supporting the call for indefinite strike by the Oil Sector Officers' Association, the NTPC Executives' Federation of India has also intensified its stir for better pay packages by submitting a 14-point memorandum to the prime minister.
The Federation, claiming the support of 9,000 NTPC executives of the power generator's staff of 11,000, has decided to go on indefinite strike from February 25. Before this, NTPC executives will also go on token strike for a day on February 17 to demonstrate strength.
"We support the call of indefinite strike by the Oil Sector Officers Association. We gave a 14-point memorandum to the Prime Minister yesterday for better pay packages for executives and more autonomy for NTPC to take (a) call on such matters," NTPC Executive Federation of India (NEFI) chairman Rakesh Pandey told PTI
When asked whether the strike call given by the NEFI is legal, Pandey replied, "We have already given notice in this regard on December 5 as per the provisions of the Trade Unions Act, 1926, which require one-month notice for such (an) act."
He said the federation is ready to speak to the authorities about this. But if the authorities pay no heed to "our demands, we would not hesitate go on strike for an indefinite period from February 25. Before doing that we would go on token strike for a day on February 17", he added.
Pandey said, "We condemn false propaganda by the Department of Pubic Enterprises that there is 200-300 per cent increase for executives. The ground reality is that the pay packages would be reduced in most of the cases."
Commenting upon the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) set up to deal with the issue, he said, "The CoS formulated to address the shortcomings of the Justice Rao Committee report has practically scrapped that."
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