ARC staff strike for wage hike

NAGERCOIL: Over 2,000 employees of the Arasu Rubber Corporation (ARC) in the district observed a one-day strike demanding wage hike on Monday.

The corporation has 4279.78 hectares of rubber plantations in Nagercoil district and the company functions with five divisional offices at Keeriparai, Manalodai, Chithar, Mylar and Kodayar.

More than 2,000 employees, including tappers, field workers and factory workers, both under casual and permanent stream, are working at the ARC. Once in every three years, the contract of these employees is supposed to be renewed and a new wage settlement is to be signed between the employees union and the ARC management.

But for the past 13 months, the Arasu Rubber Corporation employees are working without a new wage settlement.

“To settle the wage hike issue, various rounds of talks were held with the government. The state forest minister had assured us that a one-man commission would be formed to settle the wage problem in the corporation,” said Kanyakumari district Estate Workers Union general secretary M Valsa Kumar.

During the time of talks itself, we opposed over this and wanted the Minister to settle the issue through talks. But as they were not ready for talks, we boycotted the meeting and planned to observe a one-day token strike on January 23,” Valsa Kumar added.

Owing to the strike called by various trade unions for better wages, over 2,000 employees working at the ARC� did not turn up for work on Monday.