Meeting between Railway Board and Federations fixed on January 15 & 16, 2014.

All India Railwaymen Federation to which WREU is affiliated had conducted a strike ballot on December 20 and 21across seventeen zones of the Indian Railway, in which about 8 lakh employees participated about 96% voted in favour of a strike,

National Federation of Indian Railwaymen is also planning to conduct a strike ballot on January 17 and 18 across the country.

In this scenario, Railway Board has called a meeting of representatives of these Federations on January 15 and 16 to discuss the pending demands. There are many issues on which there is unanimity between the Railway Board and the Unions like revision of grade pay for the running staff categories and Station Masters, but those demands are pending with the Finance Ministry.

A possible strike can prove to be a nuisance for the Congress led United Progressive Alliance Government, already battling economic crises. A Railway strike means the entire economy comes to a halt. It is not the political cost but it the economic cost that is the cause of worry. Central Government has already announced setting up of the 7th Central Pay Commission.

It is very sad that in a fire accident in Bandra-Dehradun Express, 9 people lost their lives.  In fact, in any accident, the primary casuality will increase manifold after some time then only we will come to know clear picture.  Unfortunately, it is the second fire accident on Indian Railways within a fortnight.  In all such mishaps, Indian Railways orders inquiry but to my knowledge no such report is made public.  Perhaps, Indian Railways is the only organization in the world which conduct inquiry of its own accident.  Although Safety Commissioner is deemed to be independent, he is under the Ministry of Railways. As such, how far such type of inquiry will  reveal the truth is doubtful but there is every possibility of cover up.  Moreover, the report is not made public.  How a common public can expect justice in such a case?  It is high time to change the system. Why can't we raise voice against it?   

Have you heard of a Union, which formed before the birth of the organisation? It is Western Railway Employees' Union (WREU), which was formed much before Western Railway came into existence.

I will give full history of the union later on.  I am winding up today due to paucity of time.

ITF WORKSHOP ON MASS COMMUNICATION

A Workshop on Advance Communication was organized by International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) at Hotel Bawa International, Mumbai, on 6^th and 7^th January 2014.  26 participants from 15 ITF affiliates in India attended the Workshop.  Com. Vikas Gupte, T.N. Mahendran and Varsha Bhosale from Western Railway Employees’ Union attended the Workshop.

At the outset, Bro. Sangam Tripathi, Regional Director, ITF Asia Pacific, briefed about the purpose of organizing the workshop, which is very overdue.  For the last many years, the need of educating union activists about advance communications and social networking has been felt and ITF was planning to conduct a Communication Workshop in the year 2013 but somehow it prolonged upto January 2014.

After introduction, Mr. Rashid Ali, a Scholar & Asst. Professor, Maldives National University, explained about computer, its functioning and its use in advance communications.  He also talked about new communication techniques through Facebook, Twitter, etc.  After evaluating the knowledge of the participants, 6 groups were formed and each group was assigned a task of culling out information from website on the subjects assigned to them. All the groups made presentation on Power Point on the assigned to them.

On second day, Com. Shiva Gopal Mishra, Gen. Secretary/AIRF, who happened to be in Mumbai, visited the workshop and addressed the participants on the role played by mass communication techniques in transformation of the society.  Thereafter, Mr. Manoranjan Pegu of PSI, explained how to create Blogs, the difference between Twitter, Blogs and Facebook. Mr. Arvind Koshal of ITF, explained on Skype, Viber and Whatsapp and how to use it efficiently for communicating.

While concluding, Bro. Sangam Tripathi emphasized the need of using what were learned in the Workshop on day-to-day functioning and utilizing the latest communication techniques to reach out mass labour and to tickle down information at grass root level.  While taking feedback from the participants, all of them appreciated the workshop and urged for the need of conducting more such workshops for each transport sectors separately so that more and more people will be benefitted out of the same and mass communication measures can be effectively utilized in strengthening unions.

WREU had started its Website "www.wreuindia.in" on 31 December 2013.  For getting latest developments on Union's activities, please visit the site.  You can also read our publication "Railway Sentinel" on this site.