The negotiation between PTCL management and union’s action committee has failed. The negotiation was initiated by the management to persuade the union leaders to end the daily two hour token strike and public meetings against the privatization. The president of PTCL said that management is ready to accept all the demands put forward by the unions action committee, but he is not in position to stop the privatization process. The union leaders demanded to issue the official notification to implement the demands. The management refused to do that immediately and in protest union leaders left the meeting.
Leadership still divided
The leadership of unions action committee is still divided on the question of negotiations. Three largest unions want to start negotiation, but small unions want to continue the boycott. Especially the two unions linked with PPP and Jamat-e-Islami are opposing any sort of talks with management. They were even not willing to sit in the yesterday meeting with management. They are famous for adventurism and opportunism. They will completely betray the movement on the orders of their leadership. Both political parties are not against privatization, and support the free market economic policies. There is a danger of split in the action committee on this issue. The management is also using this situation and pressing the leadership to bring them on the negotiating table. The situation will become more clear in next couple of days.
PTURC and Socialist movement is urging the leadership to start negotiations, because at the moment the management is under huge pressure from the government to settle the dispute to gave concessions to the workers. It is best time to force the management to accept all the main demands. So it is necessary to start negotiation and continue strike at the same time. In the case of a agreement , the unions should not call off the strike unless the agreement fully implemented.
Workers want to fight to the end. They have practically taken over the strike. The public meeting in Quetta (Baluchistan) showed the real mood of the workers. This was the largest ever meeting organized in telecom sector on 16th May, in which 1500 workers participated. Now the daily two hour token strike has spread in the every corner of the country. There were some problems in Karachi in the beginning, because MQM (Karachi based linguistic political party) was forcing the leadership not to observe token strike. But the workers refused to follow orders and now observing daily two hour strike from last two days. It is clear that if leadership decided to go to the complete strike, the workers will respond with full support.
Impact of Leaflet
The leaflet produced by the PTURC (which was sponsored by the SMP) gets tremendous response nationally . We have received many calls from telecom workers from many areas of the country. The workers are distributing this leaflet and demanding more. The response has been more impressive than we really thought. The ordinary workers are saying that after reading this leaflet they are more determined to fight against privatization. Many are saying that they first time get information like that. We have decided to produce more leaflets to meet the demand. We are also thinking to produce new leaflet.
Socialist Movement and PTURC also have launched the solidarity campaign. The first solidarity meeting will be held in Islamabad on 23th May. Other meetings in Lahore, Multan, Karachi, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, and other cities will follow soon.