PRAGOTI

The self-styled 'foremost media conglomerate of India', the Hindustan Times group are doing what the Birlas have been notorious for since their earliest avatar as Birla Brothers in the 1910s. They have launched a large-scale retrenchment of media workers in Hindustan and Hindustan times. In this, they have displyed remarkable 'quality' and innovation', their professed hallmark, in creating an atmosphere of terror and uncertainty. Physical threats, humilation and molestation are all part of the time-tested innovative practices that are supposed to counter the economic crisis. Other media conglomerates, not to be outdone in the competition in workers' rights violation have been doing the same. Molesting a woman journalist is part of this hallmark of 'quality'.

Those who might think that the recession provides a valid reason for such acts if indeed such acts can be validated, need to rewind only six years to  when the economy was set to 'boom', to remember that the K K Birla Group owned Hindustan Times Limited had dismissed from service 362 workers on October 3, 2004. Thus it is continuation and intensification of a prolonged war to casualise the status of media industry workers and the economic crisis is merely an excuse to intensify the attacks on workers. 

Pragoti had earlier carried DUJ's S K Pande's article 'And Now its Target Journalists….. On Birla Group and other Press Barons' which sums up the situation as:

A massive dismissal of journalists- even contract journalists has begun- leaving the few left speculating 24/7 when they would get the sack or be transferred or humiliated. Earlier it was period of killing the wage board by sacking some and putting some on contract and transferring others to humiliating postings. Under the cloak of recession after targeting of press workers and select scribes it is now more specific, get rid of the bulk of contract journalists and target the seniors.

The DUJ has called on all journalists and press unions for a consorted fight to check the menace of mass coercive dismissals and retrenchments in the newspaper industry in the country.

Mohammed Amin, the CITU General Secretary and Raja Sabha MP has written a letter to the the Minister of Labour, Oscar Fernandez,  outlining the details of the violations of labour rights. Here is the text of the letter.

Dear Shri Fernandes,

I am writing to you on a serious matter which requires your immediate attention and urgent action.

Newspapers all over India have launched a massive dismissal of journalists
and other employees, giving the excuse of the recession hitting their revenue. Topping all these newspapers is the Hindustan Times Group that has removed more than 100 journalists and other employees in just one fortnight in January. The Hindustan Times Group has a long history of the anti-labour practices that peaked about six years ago when over 350 non-journalists and some 50 journalists were thrown out of job overnight. The matter was raised in Parliament and is now pending in the Court.

From the same time, the management is forcing all journalists and non-journalists in regular employment on wage board pay-scales to resign and accept contract employment. Those who opposed were sacked, creating an atmosphere of terror and uncertainty that frightened many to surrender to the whims and fancies of the management.

The Hindustan Times Group is indulging in the same type of malpractices for which Satyam is in the news these days. It has been forming companies after companies and shifting employees from one company to another without obtaining their consent or completing the legal formalities, so as to indulge in fudging of accounts and escape the statutory obligations. The malpractice of shifting the regular employees as contract labour that is now not limited to only Hindustan Times and Times of India groups but it has also spread across the newspaper industry as a tool to scuttle the statutory Wage Board awards.

The latest instance of removal of senior journalists from Hindustan and Hindustan Times was the most shocking violation of the trade union and human rights. Most of these journalists were physically thrown out of their offices and that too in less than a month or two of renewal of their
contracts for three years. The management has been putting two letters on table - sign the resignation letter and take three months' salary or get dismissed with just two months' basic salary. Most of the victims had no option to sign the resignation to get a little more money as they were not even allowed to think before taking the decision.

One employee in Lucknow suffered heart attack while senior lady journalist Shailbala, who had been serving Hindustan for more than three decades, was manhandled, molested and physically pushed out of office by a senior resident editor, after forcing her to sign on the resignation letter. She has lodged a complaint with Police, but no action has been initiated so far.

Among those humiliated, sacked and not even allowed to collect his belongings from the office is Vinod Varshney, the Bureau Chief with 37 years of standing in Hindustan. Those thrown out along with him include Shripal Jain, senior assistant editor, Subodh Mishra, senior news editor, Ira Jha, news editor as also special correspondents and reporters Anil Verma, Rajiv Ranjan Nag, Vivek Shukla, Sandeep Thakur, and Virendra Mehta.

Similar incident of sacking of the senior journalists and other reporters is going on in various centers of Hindustan like Lucknow, Patna, Dehradun, Ranchi, Banaras, Muzaffarpur, Meerut, Kanpur and Agra. Those victimized in this manner include 15 from Patna, five each from Lucknow and Kanpur, six from Dehradun, three in Banaras, two each in Ranchi, Muzaffarpur and Agra.

Similar malpractices are being followed in the group's two other newspapers - Hindustan Times and Mint. The latest to be thrown out are Rathin Das, special correspondent in Ahmedabad who was asked to fly to Delhi for an official meeting and forced to resign as soon as he arrived, while a very senior journalist of Mint, was similarly rendered jobless.

I therefore request you to kindly look into the matter and take necessary action at the earliest.

With regards,

Yours sincerely,

MOHAMMED AMIN

General Secretary, CITU
Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)

We at Pragoti stand in solidarity with the struggle of the media workers against casualisation and retrenchment .